This is in response to the prior post about Truphone. I considered recommending it to the person because of the fact that you are in your home zone in the US and Australia. If your wife who is presumably Australian, registers the SIM as an Australian living in Australia, you'll have an Australian number that you can keep. Get her a dual SIM Android phone in the US and she can stay in touch with the folks back home easily (but remember to put a do not disturb app on your phone that kills Truphone during the sleeping hours).

Its rates aren't expensive in Australia, but the prepaid SIMs are cheap, easy to purchase, and give you much better deals on the data side. Ten cents a meg for data isn't bad, it is still $10 for 100 megs. (Note, I'd also check how they round things). The other thing that is compelling is the fact that you can keep the number alive for a year easily Lastly, it calling the US is no more expensive than calling Oz.

That said, calling card calls to the US are dirt cheap and forwarding a Callcentric free phone number to an Australian mobile is $0.09 cents a minute. There was another company that charged $1 a month for the line, but was only $0.03 a minute for the call forward. (I forgot its name). Conversely, you'll have to pay Truphone $8 a month for a virtual US or Australian number and I think $0,17 a minute for the call to the US number.

For light use staying at a private home with wifi, Truphone might be an easy solution. If your phone is your lifeline while in Australia, I'd go with Amaysim's unlimited plan. It is a great deal. Make one of the numbers that is your favorites something like Callcentric's Australian dial-in number.