The 72-year-old man, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of his young victim, entered pleas of guilty to two charges in Wollongong Local Court on Wednesday - one count of sexual touching and one count of inciting a child to sexually touch.

A set of agreed facts tendered to the court reveal the parents of the nine-year-old victim had split up and the assaults happened when she was staying at her father's house on weekends.

The girl told police sometime between December 2018 and August 2019 she went to the pensioner's home to play with musical instruments he had at the house. The man told the victim he used to work at a massage place and asked if he could "touch her fanny".

He then reached over, pulled her shorts and underwear away from her body, put his hand down her pants and massaged her on the vagina. The girl told the man to stop and he moved his hand away. The victim left the home a short time later when she heard her father calling her for dinner.

It is unclear when or to whom the girl revealed the abuse, however detectives from the Illawarra Child Abuse Unit arrested the man on August 28 last year.

He admitted fondling the girl while being transported to Wollongong Police Station.

When interviewing the man, police revealed the girl had disclosed that she'd touched the man's penis. He admitted to the act, saying she had touched him outside his clothing and "rubbed" his groin area. He claimed the girl had "wanted to touch it".

He also confirmed such acts had occurred on "several separate occasions" when the victim had visited him sporadically during the nine months prior.

In court on Wednesday, Magistrate Michael Stoddart accepted the man's pleas of guilty to both charges and ordered a background report be prepared ahead of his sentencing hearing on April 8.