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A teenager from the Land Down Under has faced legal proceedings after allegedly defacing a large art piece of a mythical creature by affixing plastic eyes to it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, 19 years old, participated remotely at the local court in South Australia on that day, facing with a single charge of property damage.

Officials commented at the moment of the September incident, the local council said that surveillance video captured a individual placing fake eyes on the sculpture, which locals have dubbed the “Cast in Blue”.

The accused did not enter a plea and told the court she was unwell, according to media sources, with the magistrate advising her to find a legal representative before her next court date in the final month of the year.

The following day the alleged incident, the local mayor stated that repairs to the popular community sculpture would be expensive as the stickers were impossible to be detached without damaging the art piece.

“This intentional vandalism to a valued public artwork is inappropriate and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin said in mid-September. “It is not harmless fun, it is costly - it is also frustrating to those people of our community who have welcomed the Blue Blob.”

The mayor said the council would pursue the “substantial” restoration expenses from those responsible for the vandalism.

When the artwork was first proposed, it received mixed reactions from the area residents due to its price tag and design.

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