Mandy Moore in Australia & Searching for 'Challenging' Film Role

03/03/2008 at 02:45 PM EST

Mandy Moore is feeling the Aussie spirit these days.

The pop star, blogging on her MySpace page from "Dan Undah!" (as she calls it), says she's having a blast playing with fellow singer Ben Lee – and, after she opens for Kelly Clarkson, she's looking forward to coming home and "hopefully" finding a "compelling and challenging" movie project.

Says the 23-year-old star in her posting:

Greetings from Dan Undah! Once again, I have to say this country blows me away in EVERY way. We just got to Adelaide after spending three full days in Perth. Amazing. We played two shows with Ben Lee opening for him before he took the stage in front of a 65-piece orchestra. Words can't explain how brilliant he is and how genius the arrangements were of his songs. He had the crowds in the palm of his hands.

It was a bit awkward to step on stage here for the first time here in years - especially with my own music and (and no dancers that I'm sure a bulk of the audience might have been expecting!) We are touring barebones-style with just Loren on piano and Chaves on guitar. It's actually really great sometimes to not have the pressure of the full band but I can't wait to get back down here with the set-up we toured with in the States.

For the next week, we'll be doing a short intimate set opening for Kelly Clarkson down here and then off to Manila to play one show there on the 12th.

Happy to come home after this trip and really dig into some film projects i've had my eyes on now that everything is back up in motion. I am so ready to get back to work in terms of writing my next record, recording some demos and hopefully locking in a compelling and challenging film project.

Hope you are all well and enjoying life. I'll post some pics this week from down here. Hoping to see you all soon ...

xx
MM