Melanie Boyd was stepping out of the surf near Tathra on Monday afternoon when she took an unlucky step and felt a sharp pain.
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She looked down and was shocked to see a red-bellied black snake hanging from her foot.
"I had to shake it off," Melanie said. "When I shook the snake off it [the bite] started bleeding straight away and then the snake just slithered right along the edge of the beach and into the rocks."
The 14-year-old from Melbourne, on a family holiday on the NSW south coast, was swimming at a beach three kilometres from the nearest road.
Luckily her mother, Jenni, was nearby and rushed to help her.
"She came out of the water and I looked up and realised something wasn't quite right," Mrs Boyd said.
"When I caught sight of her face I knew there was something really wrong."
Mrs Boyd applied first aid and called triple-0, frustrated that she couldn't do more to help during the 30-minute wait for paramedics to arrive.
"My first thought was that I needed to get her out of there but he [the triple-0 operator] kept assuring me that I was doing the right thing by keeping her still and wait for help to come to us," Mrs Boyd said.
Once on the scene, the paramedics organised for the Snowy Hydro Southcare helicopter to pick up Melanie and take her to Canberra.
Just before the helicopter arrived, Melanie's condition started to deteriorate. "I kept on shaking and I couldn't really breathe so I had to have an oxygen mask,'' she said.
And she also was worried about air sickness in the helicopter.
"I was just so scared, I get really travel sick but they gave me something for that," Melanie said.
She was released from Canberra Hospital with only a sore foot on Tuesday afternoon.
Peter Child, from Canberra Reptile Zoo, said red-bellied black snakes were often found near water, but he said Melanie was unlucky to have been bitten.
''A red-bellied black snake, under normal circumstances, would never bite unless you mistakenly trod on them or they were provoked," Mr Child said.
The website of the Australian Venom Research Unit (AVRU) at the University of Melbourne says there have been no confirmed human deaths from red-bellied black snake bites, although animals have died.
