We must be experiencing difficult economic times.
Last night I had the same dream as in 2016 – what are the odds on that?
My life – before and after I won Lotto ($40M!) Powerball?
Like many other lucky Kiwis (I suspect?) last night I dreamt I had won Lotto Powerball.
The dream was so vivid and real that it must be true? Dreams can be fun like that without any of the restraining shackles of reality.
My problem was that, in my humble opinion, I have been enjoying the lifestyle of the very fortunate for the last decade or two. The images might explain the dilemma.
I am already living my dream. I can go trout fishing any time throughout the year, with a wide choice of over 50 pools on a world-famous trout river in beautiful natural surroundings whenever I like. All year we have many good friends come and stay to go fishing with. Most are more experienced and better anglers than me and always willing to assist the old bloke.
As I am already enjoying a far better lifestyle than I ever dared to dream of, why would I want to dare change it?
Have a hard squiz at the ten-year-old “before” photo at the top, which is me in my heaven – trout fishing on the Tongariro. For the most rewarding active retirement lifestyle, surely it really can’t get any better than that?.
The “after” winning Powerball photo below only shows a change of pools. It is very difficult to improve on life style perfection!
As I did not want to change anything in my dream I then had to thrash out what to do, how to invest or spend $40M? As that was surprisingly much easier than expected, I’m sure you will want to know too.
For a brief moment I thought it would have to go to charity? Then I hardened up and wisely decided it should be all about me, me, me…
What would I really like to do or change and how could all this money make it happen?
As you would expect, I thought briefly about all the material things I could buy and was astonished I could not identify any we really need. i.e. Our car might be a bit tired at over 35 years old (only about 420,000 km) but is suitable for all our needs as we rarely have to drive far – in small towns all local amenities are within close walking distance. What is more, after owning our car for 25 odd years, it is part of the family; we like it. I couldn’t replace it without feeling guilty. I prefer a bike anyway.
Similarly, at our time in life our house is more than adequate for two of us and I could not see any advantage in replacing it for a larger show-off trophy home.
Perhaps I might lash out and buy a new pair of boots and waders. I have fished in gear left behind by generous anglers returning overseas for the last 12 years and have never found boots to fit me exactly. (My ankles have now retired from wading) Waders are only left behind because they leak.
What a dilemma for a big lotto winner – we are perfectly happy and don’t want that to change. How sad is that! But it is also obvious that all that lovely money should still have to be wisely invested usefully to enhance somehow and preserve our precious life style?
So this is what my wild dream conjured up… Even I was amazed – this is true.
As this quaint little tourist town of Turangi has already provides us with an idyllic retirement lifestyle focusing on trout fishing the Tongariro River, I think it should be somehow reinvested back into the local scene to protect the wonderful river and secure our small town for the future. Well, nearly all of it.
Turangi is similar to many other NZ heartland towns suffering economic woes. The original town developed in the 1960’s was for about 8-9,000 people, but now less than 3,000 now live here. About 40% of the housing are holiday homes.
Hence, the excessive number of empty shops and forlorn, deserted appearance in the town centre. Therefore, this would be an ideal opportunity to develop exciting new employment opportunities aimed at encouraging tourism. New jobs would keep the young people here and increase the resident population. It now seems a bit loopy, but that was how the dream unfolded.
In my 2016 dream it was easy to find a win-win solution. The Lotto winnings were to be dedicated to a new tourist bike trail along the edge of the big lake to link up with Taupo to bring hordes of tourists to Turangi. How about that! (See below for 2025 changes)
About 10km of bike trail is already existing at the Taupo end as far as Waitahanui (As at 2016, although there has been some new development along the lake edge since) so the BIG win was to be invested on speeding up the construction and development along the southern Turangi end.
A feature was five pedestrian and biking bridges spanning the wonderful trout rivers to also serve walkers and anglers. The bridges would be spectacular, arched, engineered architectural monuments.
The main physical barrier and cost was Bulli Point, where the trail was to be built on a stunning tourist boardwalk around the base of the cliffs (Similar to the precedent on Lake Dunstan bike trail developed since 2016).
I was surprised how easy it was to spend it all in my dream.
SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed is my life Manager as well) will be even more surprised as in my dream even She concurred with the bike trail investment decision!
I hope She remembers to buy a ticket?
So there you are. Our Lotto win all done and dusted… I just thought you should know too. Now I hope I can sleep peacefully again.
2025 Update: After many years of promoting the T2T bike trail, Toe Paw Council have been a complete disappointment, so we have given up on them. Instead, we will invest our winnings to head south to link up the existing Tongariro River Trail (TRT) to the wonderful bike trails off the Kaimanawa Road and Poutu Dam. The new TRT bike trail will have many side tracks to provide anglers’ access to all the best scenic remote fishing pools in NZ. It will be like discovering a new river to replace all the now inaccessible pools the Council and DOC have lost to aggradation silting up in the lower Tongariro River.
This will link with Tree Trunk Gorge and other proposed bike trails supported by the Ruapehu Council, who showed how keen they are to promote tourism with their two new trails recently announced. This should be just a minor geographic directional change which should not be too difficult, as we will have oodles of $ Lotto funds to donate to Ruapehu Council to help smooth progress and overcome all the usual planning obstacles.
