“Hold on a minute, I’ll need to pick my wife up off the floor!’
These words, along with plenty of laughter and excitement, were heard over the phone when Trevor Merkel relayed the news to Leone, his wife of 50 years, that she had just won a $10,000 travel voucher in The Leader Shop Local Barossa competition.
The Happy Valley residents have been travelling to the Barossa regularly over the past few weeks visiting their daughter, Tanya who has just moved to Nuriootpa.
It was during these visits that the couple couldn’t resist shopping locally for a few things as house warming gifts and Leone said it was the dinner set they purchased at Wohlers which proved to be an extra lucky buy.
“We put quite a few entries in around the Barossa!” Leone said of their shopping adventures.
Bubbling over with excitement, Leone admits she’s never won anything quite like this before “apart from ‘winning’ my husband”.
She can’t wait to enjoy a holiday together.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Leone.
“You enter different raffles and things around the place and Trevor always says, you know we won’t have any hope of winning - I say, well, you’ve got to be in it to win it!”
The couple don’t know exactly how they’ll use their travel voucher just yet, but a trip to Cairns is definitely on the list.
“We’ve always wanted to go to Cairns so that could be a good start!”
Trevor has a few ideas.
“We have a favourite hotel in Melbourne so we might spend six months there!” he joked.
“It will probably be within Australia anyway…. probably quite a bit of Australia by the sounds of it!”
Daughter, Tanya couldn’t be more thrilled for her parents.
“They are just beautiful people, they are like my best friends and it couldn’t happen to two nicer people really,” she said.
Mr Darren Robinson, director of sales and marketing at The Leader, said Leone’s name was randomly selected from tens of thousands of entries received during the month long campaign.
“It was wonderful to see all of the smiling faces putting their entries in during the last four weeks of the promotion. These are the people that choose to shop local and ultimately keep our local businesses thriving, he said.
“I was pleased with the feedback that we have received from participating businesses that have indicated an increase in sales as a direct result of the promotion.”