Australia gets its first monolith, engraved with mystery coordinates leaving locals baffled

The monolith has popped up in Adelaide.
The monolith has popped up in Adelaide. Photo credit: 7NEWS screenshot

A reflective metal monolith, complete with cryptic coordinate engravings, has popped up in Adelaide - the first of its kind to hit shores down under. 

A member of the public stumbled across the three-metre-tall triangular structure on Thursday evening in the Adelaide suburb of Noarlunga, 7NEWS reports.

The monolith, located next to a train bridge, has three sets of coordinates carved into the metal. 

The top set takes you to a Brownstone building in Brooklyn, New York City; the next takes you to an uninhabited island called Managaha, in Guam; and the lower set strangely marks The Sphinx in the Al Giza Desert, Egypt.

It's not known whether the three locations have a special significance.

The discovery follows a string of monoliths springing up right across the world, the most recent spotted only days ago in the UK on Isle of Wight beach.

The UK monolith was discovered by local Tom Dunford, who told Sky News he was shocked to find the "really reflective" structure, which he recognised "right away" while walking his dog. 

The first monolith popped up in Utah in November only to disappear a week later, followed by one found in California later replaced with a wooden cross, and another found in Romania which also vanished only days after its discovery.

The discovery of the various monoliths has left people baffled and ignited the imagination of sci-fi lovers due to their similarity to props found in Stanley Kubricks's 1969 sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Artists and pranksters alike have had a shot at claiming responsibility for the installations, but it is still not clear who exactly is behind them.

A US artist collective called The Most Famous Artist claimed responsibility after its founder announced on Instagram: "I'm here to say, I didn't do the monolith, but I didn't not do the monolith."

The collective is now capitalising off the phenomenon by selling monoliths.

Youtube channel I Did A Thing has also tried to claim responsibility and made a monolith of their own in an attempt to gain publicity for a Netflix show.