and the instructor needs to be FAA certificated
Allow me to clarify this somewhat. The Aussie hours can be certified in your FAA logbook by an Aussie instructor (indeed no FAA instructor can certify those). Your FAA instructor can then certify all the subsequent hours in your FAA logbook.
I say this because even with a recurrency (eg IR) you can fly outside the USA and get your hours certified by a non-FAA instructor. However, all flight checks and reviews under your FAA licence must be signed off by a current FAA instructor. Hope this helps.
Btw, congratulations. If I could live my life over again, I would have done everything under FAA (rather than CASA), chiefly due to the lower cost.
