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A young person from Australia has appeared in court after allegedly defacing a large art piece of a mythical creature by applying plastic eyes to it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, 19 years old, participated via phone at Mount Gambier Magistrates Court in the state of South Australia on Tuesday, charged with one count of damaging property.

Officials commented at the time of the September incident, the local council said that CCTV footage showed a person placing fake eyes on the sculpture, which locals have dubbed the “Blue Blob”.

The accused did not enter a plea and told the court she was ill, as reported by news outlets, with the judge recommending her to find a lawyer before her next court date in December.

The following day the alleged incident, the city leader said that repairs to the much-loved public artwork would be expensive as the adhesive eyes were impossible to be removed without damaging the art piece.

“This intentional vandalism to a valued public artwork is unacceptable and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin said in mid-September. “It is not harmless fun, it is pricey - it is also frustrating to those members of our society who have welcomed Cast in Blue.”

The mayor added the council would seek the “substantial” repair costs from those responsible for the damage.

When the artwork was first proposed, it received varied responses from the local community due to its price tag and design.

Costing 136,000 Australian dollars (eighty-nine thousand US dollars; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the sculpture represents a mythical megafauna, with the sculpture’s designers influenced by an ancient anteater-like marsupial found in nearby caverns that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.