She has been called a medical wonder. 10-year-old girl Rachael Shardlow miraculously survived being stung by a box jellyfish, one of the world's most venomous creatures, in December while swimming 23 kilometres upstream from the ocean mount in Calliope River, near Gladstone in Queensland.

In fact, she was not only stung, she was actually enveloped by the jellyfish. Shardlow has scars to show where the jellyfish's tentacles strapped to her limbs.

Doctors presumed the girl would surely die as survival from box jellyfish bite is very rare. But the girl did not only survived, she is almost 100 percent recovered.

Zoology and tropical ecology associate professor at James Cook University, Jamie Seymour, said it was the first time he saw a person survived after such an extensive sting.

"I don't know of anybody in the entire literature where we've studied this where someone has had such an extensive sting that has survived. When I first saw the pictures of the injuries I just went, 'you know to be honest, this kid should not be alive'. I mean they are horrific," he said.

He added that you can normally see people who have been stung by box jellyfish with that extensive number of tentacle sting, in a morgue.

Seymour said the university would be monitoring the progress of the girl's recovery and is very much interested to know if there would be any long-term effects.

He said that information would be very useful in the future, particularly in understanding box jellyfish sting.

Rachel's father, Geoff, said his daughter responded with the treatment very well. Except for the scars and some short-term memory loss, her daughter is completely well.