Leah Stewart’s one wish after surviving attack by four-metre shark at Coogee Beach

Leah Stewart said goodbye to her one-year-old daughter August as she headed into the water at Coogee for her usual swim.

Moments later she was mauled by a great white shark, losing her left arm and part of her thigh, but incredibly surviving and pledging to embrace a second chance at life.

And now, 11 weeks after the June 13 horror, Leah has one wish: to be able to carry August again.

“There’s good and bad days,” she admitted of her recovery as she sat down with 60 Minutes for her first extended interview.

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‘You ugly f---er’: Leah Stewart’s incredible survival as four-metre shark attacked on Coogee Beach

“For me, I’m still coming to terms that [my arm is] not there.

“Sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else, not me. I haven’t processed that it actually is real.

“I get frustrated. I get really frustrated. August will put up her hands and she’ll want me to pick her up. I’m just desperate, to, I just really want to pick her up, and I just can’t - we’ll go to the park, and she’ll be wanting to do things, and I still can’t.

“It was really hard to give up that independence, but now I’m looking at it as the small wins. It’s about the little things.

“Now I can brush my teeth, I’m really proud of that – it’s so nice to brush your own teeth, not someone else doing it for you.”

It was the thought of staying alive for her daughter that drove Leah to physically fight off the shark.

“You ugly f---er, you are not taking me away from my daughter,” the 35-year-old recalls thinking as she punched the monster in the face.

But her injuries were so severe that she was not expected to survive.

The shark bite took the outside muscle of Leah’s left thigh and severed her left arm so badly it needed to be amputated.

Her right hand was also shredded, causing serious nerve and tendon damage.

She didn’t know if she’d be able to walk again or have the use of any limbs, but she is back on her feet and also learning to write again.

It’s a testament to just how far she’s come that two months after being admitted to hospital clinging to life, Leah was able to walk out. But, she’s under no illusions that massive challenges lay ahead.

Her story of survival is one the brave mother will one day tell her daughter, when the time is right.

“I thought maybe I’ll just write her a little children’s book, and I’ll work very carefully on the wording and how it goes,” the school teacher mused.

“[Something] along the lines of, ‘Mummy loved you so much that even when the scariest thing could happen, she loved you so much that she was able to conquer that’.

“I want to write her a little book that she can just read and reassure her that you are so loved and nothing could take me away from you when I’m your mum and I’m here, I’m here for you and for me and for us.

“One day, not anytime soon, I’d like to show her [things] and she’ll understand the full story a bit when she’s much older.”