Boy, 12, bitten after stepping on sleeping snake on beach

A 12-year-old boy has been bitten by a snake on a Newcastle beach.

Jake Ferguson was walking down a wooden path in the suburb of Stockton when he stood on a sleeping reptile.

It slithered over the young boy’s foot.

“It must’ve nipped Jake but we didn’t think it had,” Jake’s grandmother Jane told 7News.

It could have been one of our most venomous, with the family saying it was a brown-coloured snake.

Jake collapsed onto the sand.

“There was a little bit of blood on his foot and then by the time he got out there he was unconscious,” the boy’s grandmother recalled.

Beachgoers compressed two puncture wounds before more help arrived.

“The first aid that was applied on scene by bystanders was exactly what needed to be done,” Inspector Andrew Stainson, from NSW Ambulance, said.

“A compression bandage was put on which stopped the flow of any venom.”

The Careflight helicopter brought anti-venom but without knowing what type of snake it was, it could not be administered.

Jake is still in a serious but stable condition in hospital and is undergoing toxicology tests to find out what type of snake it was.