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A teenager from Australia has faced legal proceedings after reportedly vandalizing a large blue sculpture of a mythical creature by affixing googly eyes to it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, aged 19, appeared remotely at Mount Gambier Magistrates Court in South Australia on Tuesday, facing with one count of damaging property.

In a statement at the moment of the September incident, the municipal authorities said that surveillance video showed a individual putting artificial eyes on the artwork, which locals have nicknamed the “Cast in Blue”.

The accused made no plea and told the court she was ill, as reported by news outlets, with the magistrate advising her to secure a legal representative before her upcoming hearing in the final month of the year.

The following day the alleged incident, the local mayor said that restoration to the much-loved public artwork would be expensive as the stickers were impossible to be removed without harming the sculpture.

“This wilful damage to a valued community art is unacceptable and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin remarked in September. “It is not innocent amusement, it is pricey - it is also disappointing to those people of our community who have welcomed the Blue Blob.”

She added the council would seek the “significant” repair costs from those responsible for the damage.

When the sculpture was first proposed, it received varied responses from the local community due to its cost and appearance.

Priced at 136,000 Australian dollars (eighty-nine thousand US dollars; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the artwork 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”.