Viva finds Voice for lost loved ones

The Voice's Viva Lale has recorded a song that she wrote about tragically losing her cousins in a house fire.

The Voice Australia contestant Viva Lale on stage. Picture: Channel 9 Source: Supplied

The Voice Australia contestant Viva Lale on stage. Picture: Channel 9 Source: Supplied

Relatives of The Voice Australia contestant Viva Lale .. Jeremiah Lale and Viva Picture: Channel 9 Source: Supplied

Relatives of The Voice Australia contestant Viva Lale .. Paul Lini and Viva. Picture: Channel 9 Source: Supplied

THE last time Viva Lale sang for her cousins, Lini Paul and Jeremiah, was at the teenagers' memorial service, a five-hour tribute to the music-loving brothers and nine other family members lost in Australia's worst ever house fire.

Then she stood grief-stricken and numb with pain just days after the Slacks Creek tragedy of August 2011 which robbed the young men of their futures and took the lives of Lale's aunty Neti and her five children.

Almost two years on, the 26-year-old songbird realised their dream for her by taking to The Voice Australia stage and sharing the gift for singing they had championed before they died.

It was not to be result they had imagined for her, with none of the superstar coaches turning their chairs, but the determined singer from Goodna, near Brisbane in Queensland, told News Limited her dream and theirs will live on long after the reality TV show.

While other unlucky contestants came from the stage in tears, Lale says she took great pride in making that moment happen for herself.

Fans of the US series of The Voice before their shock deaths, Lini Paul, 16 and Jeremiah, 18, had urged their favourite cousin to audition for the first Australian season when it was announced.

"They passed away two months before auditions started for The Voice and at that time I wasn't really ready, but this year I knew I had to do it," the account manager said.

Overcoming her natural shyness, Lale says she felt compelled to live her life with renewed purpose after losing so much.

"I know how precious life is...I know it sounds corny, but it's so true. I could bear (losing) one, but six at the same time has been really, really hard. The only way to get through it was to remain positive. It would have been such a waste of another life if I sat there and did nothing," Lale said.

"That's not the life they wanted to live, that's not what they wanted for me either. I know they would want me to be happy and do what I love to do and that's sing."

Her cousins had big plans for their lives too: Lini Paul was the "clown" aiming for university; while 'Jerry' loved rugby and wanted to play for the Queensland Reds.

But just after midnight on August 24, those ambitions were extinguished after the two-storey home they shared with their aunty Fusi Taufa and her extended family at Wagensveldt St, Slacks Creek was destroyed by a blaze that would shock Brisbane's Samoan community and beyond.

Sharing her memories of that black night for the first time, Lale recalls turning into the street, where emergency vehicles were crowded around her cousins' house.

"It was like a scene out of a movie. The flashing lights and as I realised the house was still burning I just took my hands off the steering wheel and covered my face," she said, blinking back tears.

"I tried to walk (towards the house) but my legs just buckled out from under me. It just wasn't real."

Walking onto The Voice stage was a woman transformed.

"I was not going to sit there on my butt and wait for the moment," she said.

"People do a lot of waiting, instead of doing it and I don't want to be one of those people."

So she didn't win through to the battle rounds, so what? It's not life or death to this focused, talented performer, who has been booked to perform regular Sunday sessions at Brisbane's Southbank and begins recording her first EP this week.

"As soon as I hit that stage I wanted to cry, tears of happiness that I made it. That was my ultimate goal and I feel in myself that they were with me."

Perhaps the emotion of her audition song, Mariah Carey's heavenly reunion anthem, One Sweet Day, got the better of her, but as Ricky Martin remarked: "you have six angels on your shoulder, (you will) go out and do it."

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