Athena Cao

USA TODAY

Tuesday was "Census Night" in Australia -- a night touted with much fanfare by the government to encourage Australians to complete online forms with the personal information the country needs to count the population and plan for government services.

But Australians who logged on to the census site Tuesday met with error messages, gray time-out screens and spinning beach balls.

Never mind. The Aussies took to Twitter instead, showcasing the top-notch sarcasm to skewer the government site.

“The Census website wouldn’t have crashed if they knew how many people were going to log in tonight, if only they were warned by some type of census,” SBS Comedy tweeted.

As hundreds of people tweeted at the ABS on Tuesday evening to complain their page wouldn't load, the agency beseeched people to "Please, try again." Eventually, though, ABS admitted its site had crashed and wouldn't be restored until Wednesday morning.

It's unclear whether the website was hacked or overloaded.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) collects census information every five years. This year, the bureau, seeking to capture a snapshot of the population on one day, encouraged people to complete their forms online on Tuesday. (If they don't do it by Sept. 23 they face fines of $180 a day.)

The government bureau's top official Chris Libreri, speaking before the meltdown, told news.com.au he expected 16 million Aussies, about 65% of the population, to complete the survey online.

Libreri said then that the website could handle the hordes.

“We have load tested it at 150% of the number of people we think are going to be on it on Tuesday for eight hours straight and it didn’t look like flinching,” he told the local news site.

Of course, that back fired on Twitter.

The folks down under were already miffed at the ABS for changing its policies. The agency previously kept personal information, such as names and addresses, for 18 months. This year, the agency extended that to four years.

The Statistical Society of Australia’s president John Henstridge told the Guardian Australia that by retaining the information, the census bureau can crunch the data to study changes in the population over time.

The new policy sparked privacy concerns. Several lawmakers vowed to withhold their names, despite the risk of being fined.

“Remember when we thought the government was competent enough to spy on us? Oh, so naïve! #CensusFail,” Jen Dudley-Nicholson tweeted. She is News Corp’s national technology editor in Brisbane, Australia.