the criticism in an interview with The Newcastle Herald by saying: "We like to have the Simpsons, the entire family, travel and this was the beginning of that. Australia was a fantastic choice because it has lots of quirky visual things. And it's a country that is really very close to America, very in sync with America. We are so similar but yet there are all these fantastic differences, familiar yet twisted. It was intentional to make it very inaccurate. That was our evil side coming out: We'll take our knowledge of Australia and we'll twist it around to stimulate an audience and annoy them at the same time." Despite being criticized for mocking the country, the episode received positive reviews from Australians, too. Jim Schembri of the Australian newspaper The Age named it the funniest episode ever. In the episode, Tobias's father refers to Australian dollars as "dollarydoos", leading to a petition on change.org to change the name of the Australian currency to dollarydoos. The petition claims that the name change will stimulate the struggling Australian economy. When the petition had closed, it had received 69,574 signatures. Ratings In its original broadcast, "Bart vs. Australia" finished 56th in the ratings for the week of February 13–19, 1995, with a Nielsen rating of 9.1. It was the fourth-highest rated show on Fox that week. References Bibliography External links The Simpsons (season 6) episodes 1995 American television episodes Animation controversies in television Television controversies in Australia Television episodes set in Australia