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A young person from Australia has appeared in court after allegedly vandalizing a large blue sculpture of a mythical creature by applying googly eyes to it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, aged 19, participated via phone at the local court in South Australia on Tuesday, charged with a single charge of property damage.

In a statement at the moment of the September incident, the municipal authorities explained that CCTV footage captured a person putting artificial eyes on the artwork, which residents have nicknamed the “Cast in Blue”.

Ms Vanderhorst did not enter a plea and informed the court she was ill, according to news outlets, with the judge advising her to secure a legal representative before her upcoming hearing in December.

A day after the reported event, the city leader said that repairs to the popular community sculpture would be costly as the adhesive eyes were impossible to be removed without harming the sculpture.

“This wilful damage to a cherished public artwork is unacceptable and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin said in September. “It is not harmless fun, it is pricey - it is also frustrating to those people of our community who have embraced Cast in Blue.”

The mayor added the local government would seek the “significant” repair costs from those responsible for the damage.

At the time the artwork was first proposed, it drew mixed reactions from the area residents due to its cost and design.

Priced at 136,000 Australian dollars (eighty-nine thousand US dollars; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the sculpture depicts a mythical megafauna, with the sculpture’s designers influenced by an ancient marsupial ant-eater discovered in nearby caverns that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.