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A young person from Australia has faced legal proceedings after reportedly defacing a large art piece of a mythical creature by affixing googly eyes to it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, 19 years old, appeared via phone at the local court in South Australia on Tuesday, charged with one count of property damage.

In a statement at the time of the September incident, the municipal authorities explained that surveillance video captured a individual putting artificial eyes on the sculpture, which locals have nicknamed the “Blue Blob”.

Ms Vanderhorst made no plea and told the judge she was ill, according to news outlets, with the magistrate advising her to secure a lawyer before her upcoming hearing in the final month of the year.

A day after the alleged incident, the city leader said that restoration to the popular public artwork would be expensive as the stickers could not be removed without damaging the art piece.

“This wilful damage to a cherished community art is inappropriate and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin remarked in September. “It is not innocent amusement, it is costly - it is also frustrating to those members of our society who have embraced Cast in Blue.”

She said the local government would seek the “significant” restoration expenses from those responsible for the damage.

At the time the sculpture was first proposed, it drew varied responses from the area residents due to its price tag and design.

Costing 136,000 Australian dollars ($89,000; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the artwork depicts a mythical megafauna, with the sculpture’s designers inspired by an prehistoric marsupial ant-eater found in local caves that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.