Iridium satellite phone setup

I've been lurking off and on for years, but this is a first post - be gentle...

We're planning on doing a Simpson crossing next year and I've been looking into Sat phone as an emergency backup. After searching around and reading various posts (eg 29943/35536), I figured that a second-hand Motorola 9500 on Iridium with a $10/month Telstra GSM card enabled for roaming was the go.

Well I've got the phone, and just got the SIM today and had it roaming enabled. Two questions:

1) Does SMS inbound (I know the phone can't _send_ SMS) work using this roaming setup? I've sent a few SMS texts to the phone (using the Telstra GSM phone number) whilst the phone has been on and off, but none has come through as a message.

2) Does anybody have the definitive calling rate schedule. It's not on the telstra roaming rates web page, I've talked to the telstra/roaming helpdesk three times and been told three different rates - something like $1.60/min; $3.00/min; $6.??/min. I asked if they could tell me the web page that had the rates but they couldn't. Actually, they seemed a bit unsure.

Certainly the calls seem to work - I've been able to call up the Sat phone from a land line and the phone rings (I just hung up though). Also the sat phone calls out ok - I managed to call an Australian land line without problems. I only seem to miss SMS messages.

I figure I'll just look at my bill and see how much they charged for the couple of calls I made today, but I'd love to be able to have somewhere to check if the rates change over time.

Whilst you get a cheaper rate being on a proper sat phone plan, I cannot justify $30/month for what will be very infrequent call usage. So this setup seems to suit me nicely. But I would like to get SMS if possible...

Any pointers would be appreciated.

-g