Barry 'Bazza' McKenzie travels to England with his aunt Edna Everage to advance his cultural education.

Bruce Beresford was living in London and knew Barry Humphries socially when he heard about government funding being given to Australian films.

I said, "I don't think they've thought about that but if we whip back to Australia with a script, with you starring in it and we're all set to go, we have a good chance of getting the money.

The film also plays with the ideas of the era where the sixties cultural revolution had swept aside the certainties of classical education.

Barry McKenzie was very popular at the box office in Australia and London, and the production company repaid the government most of its money within three months of release.

On the one hand, the coarse but wholesome Barry, "cracking tubes", "chundering" and "exercising the ferret", but for all his crudity, essentially innocent; on the other, the appalling Edna, outwardly respectable in satin duster coat and lovely sheaf of fleshpink gladdies, but inwardly apoplectic with suppressed innuendo.

Edna is Humphries' strongest creation, and while her presence keeps the film alive, none of the other characters quite achieve a similar satiric intensity in her absence. ...

There are grounds for assuming that Humphries' portrayal of Australian mores is no parody but a scarcely embroidered imitation.Leslie Halliwell said:[11] Occasionally funny, defiantly crude and tasteless, but poorly produced comedy-misadventure from the Private Eye comic strip.

Australian slang combines with bad sound recording to make much of the film unintelligible.The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing:"[12] This is a scrappy but often hilarious screen version of the Private Eye comic strip, with Barry Crocker escorting his Aunt Edna Everage through England's grottiest highways and dirtiest byways, and ending with Humphries "flashing his nasty" in front of Joan Bakewell on a late-night TV show.