 The Simpsons executive producer David Mirkin , who produced the episode , responded to 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 <unk> of the Australian newspaper The Age named it the funniest episode ever while the <unk> was forked ( the ' <unk> @-@ <unk> ' fork ) into the ' <unk> ' <unk> in honour of the episode . 
