mobile ph reception in outback nsw & qld

Depends what you mean by outback. Towns usually have Telstra NextG and in reality Telstra NextG has the best coverage in remote areas.

We found Optus has very little reception in central Queensland(Winton, Richmond area)

In general, the reception is unpredictable. We were in outback NSW and QLD last Easter with a Telstra smartphone and an Optus phone. At Louth, for example, no reception in town but if you drove out to the airport, there was telstra reception. There were also times when we were nowhere near a town and all of a sudden, one of the phones would start receiving texts. This occurred with both Telstra and Optus at various times.
Unless things have changed, Windorah has no reception but Birdsville does. For Jundah and Stonehenge, again if things have not changed, one has reception and the other does not. Can't recall which way it was. Overall we found the Telstra smartphone (4G / 3G) was the better performer. The bottom line is that you should not assume that any town will have mobile reception. And, there will be locations away from any town where mobile reception will be unexpectedly available. So, you can't depend upon it absolutely.
Jon W

in a word reception from any 'smartphone' no matter who the carrier is, is generally 'crap'.

If you desperately need a phone then a satellite phone is the only way to go.

I live in Broken Hill and we have a external aerial once you get out of town toward s Sydney and towards Tiboburra you will find limited and in many cases no reception

A chap said the other day he often went from Tiiboburra to Victoria via Menindee with the old CDMA he had reception but now most of the trip has no reception

You could / should just leave your Optus phone at home , even though Telstra is not the be all and end all it is the only carrier worth having once you get away from the big smoke ,,as an aside , Windorah did actually have mobile phone reception for a whole 3 days in the last month , Whole bunch of politicians /journo's etc. in the town for 3 days so a mobile unit was set up by Telstra ,, back to normal now , don't forget the 50c pieces for the one and only phone box in Windorah ,,,,,

As said the telstra will be 99% better but take the optus as some mining companies use them. If you get reception on either then you are a winner. If you don't then nobody can annoy you.

We are heading off western Qld later too.

Look up the coverage maps on the relevant web sites.
No matter where you go, you will drop out of coverage.

We have a smart phone on optus, but take a prepaid phone on Telstra Next G.
That is telstra next G, not 3G. A lot better coverage.
Also have a 5db phone aerial that clips onto the back window, gets an extra couple of bars on the phone.

We went to the simpson from Brisbane with three mobile phones: I-phone with vodafone, and two old nokias with TPG (optus) and prepaid telstra next-G. Last reception was a good phone call on top of Big Red with the telstra phone. At the Birdsville camping area only the TPG worked for sms but the next G gave me internet. Windorah had no reception for us at all and the I-phone was useless since we left Toowoomba. Almost each town had coverage with either TPG or Telstra except for Innamincka. Once I used to bring along a satellite phone and paid high rental fees, but nowadays with high volume of traffic everywhere (even in the Simpson) you can get help if you need without waiting too long and using a phone.

Many many thanks to everyone who replied to my question. Much appreciated, and it's always good to get others ideas/experiences (networking is always helpful).
Happy n safe travels to everyone!
Mort.

I would like to have a small dash mounted device with a red led light that came on once mobile reception was available. As mentioned earlier mobile reception can be received in the most unexpected places.

Now that's an idea worth investigating! Surely some tech savvy person could devise it?! Cheers. M.