The moment an Australian dad frantically scooped up his son as aggressive monkeys attacked them on a Thailand beach has been captured on video.

Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, who have amassed 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube with their travel content, were visiting Monkey Beach on Ko Phi Phi Don island with their two young sons.

Whitelum and his sons, Lenny, 5, and Darwin, 1, were watching some monkeys on the beach when one started to look in their bag.

The 38-year-old ran toward the monkey to scare it away from the family’s belongings but the monkey lunged forward. It then lunged at Darwin.

Whitelum scooped up the screaming child in his arms as more angry monkeys came toward them.

He ran to get the bag left on the beach, but a group of five monkeys swarmed him.

Carausu said there was not any food in the bag the monkeys were determined to get into, but there was a passport, their wallets and phones.

Whitelum returned without his children to save their things, fighting off the monkeys in the process.

He ended up with a bleeding cut on his hand from a monkey’s tooth, which meant he was at risk of contracting rabies – a deadly virus spread to people from the saliva of rabid animals.

Carausu had been snorkelling at the time when she heard screaming from the beach.

“I’m not kidding babe, they went for Darwin,” Whitelum told her as she returned to the beach after the ordeal.

Another friend who was on the beach at the time added: “It was hectic. It was actually scary, could have scared him (Darwin) for life.”

Whitelum criticised a crowd of people for watching on and not doing anything to help.

“It was astonishing,” he said.

The family headed into town for medical attention, where the staff at the clinic said they treat one to two people a day from monkey bites.

“I need to have five or more needles into my wound or around it, then five shots over 20 days, then another shot today,” Whitelum explained on the video.

“So two shots today and five in my finger, and another four shots over the next 20 days.”

During the injections into his finger, Whitelum even passed out.

Carausu explained that the couple hadn’t done any research on the island before sailing there.

“Had we had known this beach was notorious for monkey attacks, we wouldn’t have gone,” she said.

Whitelum, who grew up in a small country town in South Australia, and Carausu, who grew up in a small coastal town in Western Australia, have spent nine years sailing around the world and document their travels on their YouTube channel Sailing La Vagabonde.