Meshak Nindagiye, 22, wrapped a metal dog chain around the woman's throat and held a knife to her stomach at different stages of the hour-long attack, telling her, "I'm either going to stab you to death or choke you - you chose which one".

At one point he straddled her on the bed, pressed a machete to her throat and said, "I'm not afraid of going back to jail".

Nindagiye faced up to 20 years' imprisonment after pleading guilty to the September 28, 2017 assault.

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His mother and a younger brother - one of his eight siblings - were in Wollongong District Court Friday as Judge Andrew Haesler handed down sentence.

The court heard Nindagiye argued with his girlfriend the night of September 28, 2017, after she came to his Gareema Avenue, Koonawarra home and confronted him about whether he had been unfaithful.

The woman repeatedly attempted to leave his room, but Nindagiye physically restrained her and brandished multiple weapons.

She cut her hand on the knife he held to her stomach.

Nindagiye shut the door on a friend who tried to intervene, but the man later returned and said, "Bro, let her go. Honestly, what is this?"

The woman was able to run free and her sister soon afterwards drove her to the police station.

She suffered bloodshot eyes from the choking and multiple scratches and bruises all over her body.

Nindagiye was arrested the next day.

On Friday the court heard he was "a most unusual offender" - a one-time university student who came from a tight-knit family of church-going Tanzanian refugees.

His Facebook page shows a different character to the one described the night of the attack.

"A woman brought you into this world," he wrote, in a December 2014 post. "So what gives you the right to disrespect one?"

In another post that same month, he wrote: "Most men aren't smart enough to realize that the higher you elevate your woman, the less available she is for the other men. When you break her down you make her accessible to anyone she thinks will treat her BETTER. Am I wrong or right?".

The court heard Nindagiye had been the unintended victim of a home invasion in mid-2017. In that attack, he was slashed with a machete to his head.

His lawyer, Stuart Townsend, said Nindagiye mistakenly believed that the woman knew something about the identity of his attacker, who has never been charged.

He felt paranoid and unsafe in the aftermath and kept weapons at hand as a result.

"There's simply no diminishing the severity of the conduct and the terror that this young woman must have felt - the injuries that she suffered at his hand. But I'd like Your Honour to consider that this is a young man with real prospects of rehabilitation."

The judge factored in previous convictions for common assault and domestic violence .

He sentenced Nindagiye to four years' imprisonment from November 29, 2017, with a non-parole period of three years and two months.

He will become eligible for parole on January 28, 2020.