I was hiking in the Lower Glenelg national park in remote south west Victoria (Australia) on a hot, sunny and snaky day. Dense forest borders the beautiful Glenelg river in this part of the state and I was thoroughly enjoying reconnecting with nature on a 2 day overnight trek.

After a brief period of bush bashing I stopped for lunch with 10 kilometres of track to walk until my car. I noticed some dirt on the back of my right calf while doing yoga and when I went to clean it I realised it was dried blood.

I tried to find the source of bleeding, cleaning the area thoroughly, and discovered a 1 mm x 1 mm puncture wound on my calf, oozing blood. I am a doctor by training and have treated several patients with snake bites before. I reasoned that the bite was either a leech or a snake. It was hot and I hadn’t seen a single leech the entire hike, and the wound also looked different to previous leech bites I have had while hiking. With this information, and given how many snakes are found in this part of Victoria, I decided I had to treat the wound as a snake bite.

I applied a compression bandage and activated my ResQLink PLB and waited for help to arrive.