After spotting an unusual-looking rock nestled deep in the red dirt, I retrieve the strange object to expose a gleaming blue shell poking through the dust.
"You found a belemnite," our Digging at Dawn guide tells me. "It's a type of ancient squid. Almost 90 million years old."
Ancient marine fossils are being discovered nearly every week in the tiny outback town of Richmond; 100 million years ago, this area in north-west Queensland was completely under water, part of a vast inland ocean known as the Eromanga Sea.
Richmond is the first stop on our tour of outback Queensland's Dinosaur Trail, which has become an increasingly popular hotspot for tourists and scientists hoping to make their own prehistoric discoveries.
Just a 15-minute drive from the town centre is one of the state's largest fossil-hunting sites, where visitors can dig up the remains of ancient shells, turtles, plants and, if they're lucky, dinosaur bones.
After one hour of digging in the hot morning sun, we manage to excavate ancient treasures including squid remains, prehistoric poo and a shark tooth that our guide estimates is more than one hundred million years old. "Once you find something, you're hooked," he tells us after our two-hour dig.
Fossil digging might not be the preferred holiday activity for those who'd prefer to relax by a pool all day long, but for those hungry for a unique self-guided adventure, excavating ancient remains can be an exhilarating experience.
Richmond is home to a vast array of ancient marine fossils on display at the Kronosaurus Korner museum, which is run by paleontologist Kevin Peterson and a dedicated group of volunteers.
The museum was built following the discovery of the "Richmond Pliosaur" in 1989, which is one of the best-preserved Cretaceous marine reptile fossils in the world.
A hidden jewel of the outback
Winton, home to just over 1100 people, is one of my favourite places on the Dinosaur Trail. It's a quirky, charming district with an authentic and retro feel. It's most famous for being the home of Waltzing Matilda; Australian poet Banjo Paterson's experiences during the town's "golden years" inspired him to write the iconic song.
"If you're bored in this town, you've never walked out your front door," local theatre manager Alex Mizen tells me during our visit. From the art deco storefronts decked out with vintage goodies from the 1900s to the pastel-painted houses that seem to each have their own personality, it's a little town with a lot to offer.
Winton's beating heart is the historic North Gregory Hotel. The building was destroyed in a catastrophic blaze in 1938 and has since been rebuilt three times. You're sure to feel like a kid on school holidays staying here. We enjoyed relaxing in the old-school beer garden while catching a live performance of bush poetry as we watched the sun go down.
The hotel also has its own pub and a cosy restaurant serving high-quality pub grub. It also offers an outback-style spa for guests to soak their feet after a long day of exploring.
"You'll never meet a boring character in the bush," Winton's mayor, Cathy White, tells us after a tour of the town. "People who live here don't want the 24/7 fuss that comes with living in a big city."
Next to the North Gregory Hotel is one of Australia's oldest open-air cinemas, where visitors can catch classics like Muriel's Wedding under the stars.
The cinema fits an average of 300 people and is kitted out with a retro candy bar and a fully preserved projection room from back when the dangerously explosive 35mm nitrate film was used to screen movies.
Down the street from the town's centre is the Waltzing Matilda Museum, which was rebuilt for $22 million in 2018 after the old building burnt to the ground. The museum captures the war legacy of the town, which had some of the highest enlistment rates during the First World War.
Winton is also home to some of the globe's most precious opals, with the nearby Fermat Opal Fields now producing 95 per cent of the world's commercial-grade gems.
We tour the town on a Sunday, when many of the local shops are closed. Try to visit on a Friday or Saturday to experience the full scope of what Winton has to offer.
Sauropod city
On top of a scenic, vast red hill is the internationally regarded Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, which is located just a 15-minute drive from Winton.
The sprawling not-for-profit natural history museum is a complex of sophisticated stone and iron buildings, and looks like the perfect lair for a Bond-movie billionaire super villain. The museum itself was co-founded by its executive chairman, David Elliott, who first discovered the fossils of what was at the time Australia's largest dinosaur on his cattle station in 1999 and opened the museum a decade later.
We begin our three-hour guided tour with a visit to the museum's collection room and fossil preparation laboratory, where a group of volunteers and staff carefully remove rock from dinosaur bones using small hammers and dental picks.
Afterwards, we're ushered to the museum's trackway of massive dinosaur footprints, which show how dinosaurs behaved and interacted with each other.
Next is a tour of the museum's indoor facilities before we take a self-guided stroll across "dinosaur canyon," which showcases a field of gigantic life-sized re-creations of terrifying (and friendly) dinosaurs.
This museum visit is towards the end of our five-day trip, and it's the perfect combination of spectacular architecture, outback scenery and immersion into what the world was like more than 100 million years ago.
The writer was a guest of Tourism and Events Queensland