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A young person from the Land Down Under has appeared in court after allegedly vandalizing a large art piece of a legendary being by affixing plastic eyes to it.

The 19-year-old, 19 years old, appeared remotely at the local court in South Australia on Tuesday, charged with a single charge of property damage.

Officials commented at the moment of the recent event, the local council said that CCTV footage showed a individual putting fake eyes on the artwork, which residents have nicknamed the “Cast in Blue”.

Ms Vanderhorst did not enter a plea and told the court she was ill, according to media sources, with the magistrate advising her to secure a legal representative before her upcoming hearing in the final month of the year.

A day after the reported event, the local mayor said that repairs to the much-loved community sculpture would be expensive as the adhesive eyes could not be removed without harming the art piece.

“This wilful damage to a valued community art is inappropriate and disrespectful,” City of Mount Gambier mayor said in mid-September. “It is not harmless fun, it is pricey - it is also disappointing to those people of our society who have embraced the Blue Blob.”

The mayor said the council would pursue the “significant” repair costs from those accountable for the damage.

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

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 anteater-like marsupial discovered in local caves that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.