A COUPLE of weeks ago I had more than $55 million at my disposal to do with whatever I wished - to give away, invest or even spend frivolously if I wanted.
That was until last Thursday when I discovered that I hadn't won the $55m Lotto, but spending it in my mind was great fun and even if the Lotto people never produce my numbers, I will still keep trying.
Playing Lotto is a fairly innocuous pastime, for generally the investment is minimal, the pleasure of anticipation harmless and when you lose - as you will - your investment goes to a good home.
I always felt that the start of a farming year was a bit like playing Lotto, imagining this year was the one when the season will be faultless where frost, drought, commodity price collapse and other catastrophes are absent.
Budget time always seemed to illustrate the magic of farming, for no matter what the outcome of previous seasons for good or bad, the challenge remains, for as one smart soul lamented, "as I discover the answer to successful farming, they change the question".
It is more than 20 years since I planted my last crop and although the price change hasn't been dramatic, the technology of cropping has.
As one of my old farming friends noted, "if I went back farming, I would have to learn to drive a tractor again" - an overstatement perhaps, but operating the new models would indeed be a challenge.
Having attended many field days over the years, I remain impressed at the knowledge of today's farmers, and even though increasing numbers of them are university educated, that isn't the reason.
The major reasons for the increased performance of today's farmers are simple - firstly they improve because they can - and they also improve because they must.
Unfortunately, very few of the rest of the world's leaders have that same ability to adapt, well illustrated by the hysteria about climate change.
Farmers know that each season will be different, either on a year-to-year basis or in the long term, so they change and adapt to make the best of whatever Mother Nature delivers them.
Not so the billions of spoon-fed gullibles whose response to changing climatic circumstances is based on the belief that strict discipline can change the climate back to where it was in the good old days.
Their methodology is simple and involves the rest of the world's income earners transferring the bulk of their wealth to the clever green people who will spend the money wisely, mainly by paying themselves huge salaries.
In a planet that is billions of years old, recorded history is but a minute portion of that time, yet written records show dramatic changes to the climate, for our deserts once bloomed and the world once had much more - and much less - ice covering it.
People who seem unaware that carbon is the source of all plant and animal life on earth, believing it to be a pollutant, are hardly the ones to "save" the world.
Government intervention was not needed for tractors to replace horses, or for adequate food to be produced to feed the billions the green philosophers said would starve.
The market would see the world adopt renewable energy sources as hydrocarbons become scarce and expensive, far better than confiscating the wealth from the workers to pay subsidies to the smart talkers.
Frankly, I have a better chance of winning Lotto than the Greens have of changing our climate.