Canberra singer Amber Nichols came so close to making it all the way recently on The Voice, and now three more locals will get their shot when X Factor returns this Sunday night on Prime.
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Twenty-four year old Panda Maher-Smith first auditioned for the show as a favour to his little brother, 21-year-old Marvin.
"He's a fan, I guess he's always been the one who believed in me and thought I should do something with my voice," said Panda.
The Canberra disability support worker's musical inspiration is his father.
"Dad was an awesome singer – he used to sing in Australian school boy choirs," he said.
"It's surprising 'cause my mother's side is Filipino so everyone would assume that I got it from my Mum because Filipinos love to sing. But no it's definitely from my Dad. My Mum has a nail-on-the-chalkboard sort of voice."
His father sadly passed away six years ago but Maher-Smith said he didn't want his audition to be about that.
"I tried not to talk about it too much. If I was gonna go on a singing show I wanted to just be judged on my singing I guess, not necessarily on my background story.
"What happened to me was hard and it's still difficult to this day but I get through it because I have such a strong support network and that's more what I wanted to focus on."
For his Sydney audition, Maher-Smith sang one of his Dad's favourite songs, Let It Be by the Beatles, in front of judges Guy Sebastian, Chris Isaak, Dannii Minogue and James Blunt, plus "like 1000 people".
"It was the first time I've ever done something like that, I've only ever played my guitar and songs for small pubs and weddings but even that's really rare."
"I had so much self doubt, I lacked a lot of the confidence needed to be a performing musician but after I got on stage and got to perform in front of all these people – I kind of got this weird feeling that I was meant to be there and it was what I was meant to be doing. That's all I want to do now."
Canberrans Jenny Denny and Sean-Paul Parritt also auditioned, giving this year's season the most locals in any reality show.
X Factor starts at 7pm Sunday on Prime, with Maher-Smith's audition airing Tuesday night.
