This week’s visit thrilled residents of Diamond Beach, who will now be holding their breath and hoping for the best outcome, come the end of February.

That’s when the tiny hatchlings – hopefully more than 100 of them – should emerge from under the sand and make their frantic dash to the water’s edge.

The turtle – over a metre long – is known to have visited Diamond Beach to lay four times in the last nine years.

Unfortunately all but five of her young perished in 2005, due to unusually cold conditions. What the fate of the surviving five was after they reached the surf, no-one knows.

Loggerheads are fully protected in Australian waters and are listed as globally endangered, with huge numbers wiped out by a combination of circumstances including longline fishing, prawn trawling, fish and shark netting, being hit by boats, ingesting plastic bags, being plundered for food, and on land by predation of dogs, foxes and intrusion of human development.

“The Manning is extremely fortunate to have this kind of visitor,” National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Michael Thomas said this week.

“Like many other species of birds and animals we see locally, we in the Manning area are their southern-most range. This loggerhead is the furthest south known example of a nesting site.”

The female would have been born on the same beach, as loggerheads use a ‘magnetic compass’ in their brain to navigate their way back to the area of their birth to lay their eggs.

Michael Thomas estimates her to be well over 20 years old. “I have a suspicion she is much older, but we’ll never really know,” he said.

She came ashore on Tuesday night to lay her clutch, and was still on the beach when early morning walkers were about at daylight. Very soon the VIP visitor had quite an admiring crowd watching from a safe distance, while awaiting a visit by Mr Thomas.