An Australian couple who decided to raffle off their tropical island resort have picked a winner.

Tickets cost $49 (£37.33) and more than 50,000 people entered the competition.

Up for grabs was the 16-room Kosrae Nautilus Resort on the remote Micronesian island of Kosrae. It's been home to Doug and Sally Beitz since the 1990s but they want move back to Australia to enjoy being grandparents.

It lies north of the Solomon Islands and southwest of Hawaii and is home to about 6,500 people.

The competition website says the resort, which is popular for diving and fishing, is debt-free and profitable, employs 16 full-time staff and has $10,000 (£7,618) cash in the business bank account.

The prize includes the manager's four-bedroom residence, five rental cars, two 10-seater vans, a pick-up truck and the resort restaurant.

The draw was streamed live online and the winner is a bloke named Joshua.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/articl...ick-the-winner



Some prize, huh .....

Oooh, by my reckoning...or my iPad's calculator, they took in around $2,450,000! So wonder if that covered their 'sale' price and costs?

Twenty-four years ago, Doug & Sally were in their late twenties, stuck in the corporate rat race with no end in sight. A government employee, Doug felt trapped and bored with the daily grind, and haunted by a little voice inside that kept insisting, “Surely this isn’t all there is to life. Surely there has to be more.”

After watching a documentary on Micronesia in 1991, Doug and Sally became fascinated with the untouched, idyllic paradise.

Doug says, “A few weeks later I randomly picked up a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room and saw an article about the business opportunities in Micronesia. It seemed like it was meant to be.

The next day, I contacted the magazine, they gave me the phone number of the person who wrote the article, and I was at his house three days later. The momentum just snowballed from there!”

With no experience in the tourism or hospitality industries and three young children, Doug and Sally knew they were taking a risk – leaving secure jobs and their family and friends - but they packed up the family and moved to their new tropical island home.

Doug and Sally’s children eventually grew up and moved away, so over the last twenty plus years they’ve returned to the mainland for weddings and the arrival of new family members.

Now the time has come for Doug and Sally to return to Australia, prompted by a very special delivery three years ago. “We have four boys, and three years ago one of them gave us a beautiful granddaughter. She lived here for a year and we got to enjoy her every day. Then, when she left, we were just heartbroken. Sally particularly feels the tug on her heartstrings to be closer to our little angel and any other grandchildren that come along.

“We’ve had our time in the sun and enjoyed a career most people would never even dare dream about, but our current goal now is to become professional grandparents. We feel like a new chapter in our lives is beginning, and we’re ready to pass the baton to someone else,” Doug says.

At 75,485 entries, the total raised was $3,698,765!!!!!

A very big WOW!!!