When the Lake Eyre Canal was built, it followed specifications of 44 meters in width and 11 meters in depth, allowing super-heavy warships of up to 35,000 tons to pass through.
Because battleships had been completely removed from the Australasian Navy's construction plans, the heaviest aircraft carrier currently under construction was the 31,300-ton standard-displacement Imperial-class Aircraft Carrier.
This also meant that all of Australasia's new warships could travel through the canal to Lake Eyre, which would become the safest base for the Australasian Navy.
However, it was obvious that, at least for present-day Australasia, this safe base would basically never come into use.
That was because Australasia's achievements in aviation had greatly strengthened the combat power of its aircraft carriers.
According to the Navy Department's rough estimates, even if the main force of the Australasian Pacific Fleet encountered the Royal Navy's Mainland Fleet, it would still be able to put up a fight.
If the two sides broke all pretense and fought to the death, the Australasian Pacific Fleet might even be able to destroy the Royal Navy's Mainland Fleet by relying on its missile advantage.
That was already a remarkable achievement. Although British fleets were scattered across the globe, the Mainland Fleet was merely one of the Royal Navy's relatively stronger squadrons.
The problem was that Australasia did not possess only the Pacific Fleet. It also had the Indian Ocean Fleet and the Mainland Fleet—three fleets in total.
Considering that Australasia's investment in its navy was not particularly large, achieving such outstanding results was already quite unexpected.
The Royal Navy was so powerful not only because the British people invested vast sums of hard-earned money in it every year, but also because Britain possessed centuries—even millennia—of accumulated naval experience.
Australasia, by comparison, had existed for only thirty-seven years. In