“I just dove straight into the pool and I swam a lap and as I was approaching the stairs, I saw it and I started screaming,” the Fern Bay resident said of her shock encouter on Sunday with what appeared to be a juveline red-bellied black snake.

“I didn’t see it until I was about a metre away from it.”

Ms Cracroft-Wilson made a speedy exit from the water before the family sought help to capture the snake in order to release it. 

Unfortunately, the snake died before it could be safely caught.

Ms Cracroft-Wilson believed the snake was looking for water in the searing Sunday heat, when temperatures soared across the Hunter, reaching 38.2 degrees at Williamtown.

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Ms Cracroft-Wilson has lived opposite bushland in Fern Bay for 10 years and has encountered four snakes at her property in that time, but never so close to her.

“I was absolutely terrified. Oh my God, I had nightmares,” she told the Newcastle Herald on Monday morning.

“It’s just I came so close to it, and I didn’t see it.”

But she said snakes and spiders were all a part of living “near the Aussie bush”.  

“We have spiders, snakes, lots of scary things, but we also have roos around often so it’s not all bad,” she said.

Needless to say, she’ll be checking the pool area thoroughly in future.

“I have to be more vigilant now and just do a double check around the garden,” she said.