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A young person from the Land Down Under has faced legal proceedings after allegedly vandalizing a sizable art piece of a mythical creature by applying googly eyes to it.

The 19-year-old, aged 19, participated via phone at Mount Gambier Magistrates Court in the state of South Australia on Tuesday, facing with one count of damaging property.

In a statement at the time of the recent event, the municipal authorities said that surveillance video captured a individual putting fake eyes on the artwork, which residents have dubbed the “Blue Blob”.

The accused made no plea and informed the court she was ill, as reported by news outlets, with the judge advising her to find a lawyer before her upcoming hearing in the final month of the year.

A day after the alleged incident, the local mayor stated that restoration to the much-loved public artwork would be expensive as the stickers could not be detached without harming the sculpture.

“This wilful damage 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 disappointing to those people of our society who have welcomed the Blue Blob.”

She added the council would seek the “significant” repair costs from those accountable for the vandalism.

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

Costing 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 found in local caves that was “massive, lumbering and fascinating”.