Three young Canberra men were celebrating winning £100,000 (which the RBA inflation calculator says would be worth about $3 million today) according to a story on the front page on this day in 1964.
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And they were thanking their good luck charm, Robyn Sims, whose name inspired their winning ticket in the Sydney Opera House lottery. The men, Joe Wlossak, Brian Maclachlan and Brian Ebert, had named the ticket 'Date with Robyn'.
Mr Maclachlan wrote it on the ticket "as a joke" after the three men had been chatting with Robyn earlier and had joked about meeting overseas somewhere in the next few years.
The three men were all working as clerks with the Department of the Interior.
Ethne Thomas, a statistics clerk with the Retail Trade Branch of the Bureau of Census and Statistics, was another winner of $3,000 in the West Australian Lottery.
The Opera House lottery, which was used to fund construction of the architectural masterpiece, ran from 1958 until 1986.
