They include a fierce, meat-eating dinosaur with three large slashing claws on each hand.

The predator, nicknamed Banjo, was Australia's answer to velociraptor - a fierce, meat-eating dinosaur with three large slashing claws on each hand.

His possible prey, dubbed Matilda, was a giant plant-eater who died near him in the outback watering hole about 98 million years ago.

David Elliot of Australia's Age of Dinosaurs Museum says Banjo and Matilda, along with Clancy, another 16-metre herbivore, are the first large dinosaurs to be discovered in Australia in almost three decades.

A Queensland Museum palaeontologist, Scott Hocknull, said the five-metre carnivore, Australovenator wintonensis, was much bigger and more terrifying than velociraptor, made famous in the movie Jurassic Park.

"Banjo was light and agile; he could run down most prey with ease over open ground," said Mr Hocknull, whose team's finds are published in the journal, Public Library Of Science One.

The three Australian dinosaurs were named after Banjo Paterson and two characters in his poetry, because he is said to have composed Waltzing Matilda in Winton.

Like the swagman, they met their end in a billabong.

The two giant, long-necked herbivores were titanosaurs, the largest kind of animals ever to have lived.

Clancy, a Wintonotitan wattsi, weighed about 15 tonnes and was taller than the 20-tonne Matilda, Diamantinasaurus matildae, which stood about 2.5 metres high at the hip.

A Museum Victoria palaeontologist, Dr John Long, said the finds were "amazing" and put Australia back on the international map of big dinosaur finds for the first time since 1981, when the discovery of Muttaburrasaurus, a large four-legged herbivore that could rear up on two legs, was announced.

Australia has had a meagre record of dinosaur fossils compared with those of Europe, the Americas and Africa but Winton is a rich source of remains.

The president of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs, David Elliott, said more than 30 fossil sites have been identified in the region and the team has "hardly scratched the surface" with the hundreds of bones excavated so far.

"There are literally tonnes of new dinosaur fossils awaiting preparation and more incredible new dinosaur discoveries in the wings," Mr Elliott said.

Mr Hocknull said the discovery of Banjo solved a 28-year-old mystery of an ankle bone found in Victoria.

It had been thought to have come from a dwarf allosaurus, but was now known to be from an ancestor of Australovenator.