A Brit couple's camping trip on an island Down Under escalated into a nightmare after one of them was bitten by one of the world's deadliest snakes.
Ben Ross was camping on Fraser Island with girlfriend Georgia Powell when the Eastern brown snake struck, sinking its venomous fangs into his ankle.
The couple, who record their travel adventures for their YouTube channel, geebeeTV, had to be airlifted to hospital due to the bite which luckily only hit Ben's bone - sparing him from being injected with venom.
They were out exploring the Australian island last week with their drone trying to capture footage of the sunrise when the device crashed, and Ben, 29, ventured onto some sand dunes to get it.
During his walk however, the 29-year-old from Hereford describes stepping on a "darkish thing" in the long grass and feeling a "stabbing pain", before later spotting the two fang marks when they arrived back to their truck.
"I'm not sure if it was the adrenaline of getting the drone back or assuming that snakes wouldn't be at the beach but I just didn't even question it, until I stepped on this darkish thing quite deep in the grass, felt like a stabbing pain, looked down at my ankle and saw blood."
They rushed to call emergency services only to find they had no phone reception.
He added: "I mentioned it to Georgia and we both sort of just sat there frozen for a second, quickly realising that we had no signal to call anyone, and the tide was in so we couldn't access the beach to get back.
"I put pressure on my ankle to try and stop the blood flow.
"The whole situation was sort of surreal like it was happening to someone else."
Thankfully, a woman in a nearby campsite was able to rush to Ben's aid with a snake bite kit.
"She told me not to move, wrapped the bite in a bandage, circled the bite area and wrote the time of bite on the bandage," said Ben.
"They had been told the day before that an Eastern brown snake - responsible for more than 50% of snake deaths in Australia - had been spotted just along the campsite so we needed to move."
Ben and Georgia were then rushed in another campmate's Land Rover to the nearest emergency phone where they called for an air ambulance and waited for it to arrive.
"The team from the RACQ LifeFlight were brilliant," Ben added. "[They] kept me calm and got me into the helicopter to prepare me for the flight to the mainland hospital."
Georgia made her own way to Queensland's Harvey Bay Hospital as there was no room for her in the air ambulance, and Ben was rushed into emergency service where doctors treated the bite.
He needed blood tests and regular heart monitoring over the next 12 hours, and has since made a full recovery.
"Both fangs had hit the ankle bone perfectly so it didn't inject venom - a lucky escape," Ben added.
"It hasn’t changed my outlook on Australia and I’ll be out exploring again as soon as possible, just with thicker boots."
