Lara Camm took out two first prizes at the 2015 Macarthur Country Music Club Talent Quest which was held at Wests Leagues Club Leumeah at the end of June.

In the junior country rock section Lara beat the current Australia and New Zealand junior country music champion with her rendition of Carrie Underwood’s Cowboy Casanova.

The junior duo gong was shared with Jessica Butcher from West Wyalong; the pair sang another Carrie Underwood song, Something Bad.

Lara also won the junior classic country section.

Lisa Camm, Lara’s mother, said it was great that Lara was starting to get noticed.

“There was a guy down there, a DJ from a country music channel in Sydney, he’d actually approached her and said he would put her on the radio if she got some songs together,” Mrs Camm said.

“She’s sort of got some notice so it was good exposure for her, all positive feedback, and they invited her back next year.

“We got back (from Sydney) and there was a phone call from someone organising the Darlington Point Spring Festival, they’ve approached her to sing out there as well. She’s going in leaps and bounds so hopefully it will keep continuing.”

According to Mrs Camm, they didn’t realise Lara had toppled the trans-Tasman junior country champion until after the event.

“There was a young Maori girl there from Sydney and her parents are from New Zealand, she was very good, and I didn’t realise she was actually the champion that Lara had beaten.”

Switching singing teachers mid-stream hadn’t slowed Lara’s progress at all, despite missing out on X-Factor.

“She swapped to the teacher she’s with in Ardlethan halfway through this year because the teacher she was with moved to America to live,” Mrs Camm said.

“She was a little disappointed about X-Factor but (her teacher) was glad she didn’t get through to X-Factor this year because she’s still only 15. He said give her another 12 months, her voice is going to be stronger again and because he's working so hard at the moment on the technical side of her breathing he said she’s never had any pitch problems, but if you get onto a show like that too early they can tend to change your voice and he didn’t want that at this stage because she’s come so far already.

“But next year he said she’ll be able to be a lot stronger in her voice and control it a lot better, and she’ll be more of a force to be reckoned with.”

Mrs Camm said next year held some very big possibilities for her daughter.

“The teacher’s actually putting her onto a circuit next year that will do a lot of talent quests, there’s about seven next year he’d like her to get into. A lot of them are in the Sydney region, I think he’s even looking at Tamworth for her next year.”

She hoped Lara would be able to get into a country music school at Tamworth where young people are taught by industry leaders like Kasey Chambers.