Like many other lucky Kiwis (I suspect?) last night I dreamt I had won the $44M Lotto Powerball.

The dream was so vivid and real that it must be true?  Dreams can be fun like that without any of the shackles or restraints of reality.

My problem was that in my humble opinion I have been enjoying the life-style of the very fortunate for the last decade or so.  The images might explain the dilemma.

I am already living my dream.  I am able to 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 life style 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 top, which is me in my heaven – trout fishing on the Tongariro.  For the most rewarding active retirement life style, 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 the minor matter of $44M?   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 hard 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 27 years old (only about 350,000 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 20 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.

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 somehow enhance 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 provided 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 to encourage tourism.  New jobs would keep the young people here and increase the resident population.  It now seems a bit loopy but that was what the dream unfolded.

In my 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 hoards of tourists to Turangi.  How about that!

About 10km of bike trail is already existing at the Taupo end as far as Waitahanui, 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 board walk around the base of the cliffs.

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.