Thousands of litres of water a week are keeping alive Canberra's birthday gift to Queanbeyan as trees planted on Canberra Avenue bake in the summer sun.
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Grasshoppers fly through the air, the surrounding grass is washed-out yellow and the bitumen of Canberra Avenue shimmers on either side of what is a fairly unforgiving location.
Relief from the near-40 degree heat is not expected until Tuesday when the forecast top for Canberra airport is 28 degrees. The maximum temperature on Thursday was 37.6 at 5.22pm. The forecast top for Friday is 39 degrees. No rain is forecast for the next seven days.
Meanwhile, ActewAGL said it cut power for maintenance work across seven suburbs on Thursday affecting 226 customers. All work was finished by 12.30pm.
And in the face of unrelenting heat, trees, as well as people, need to keep hydrated.
The ACT government last October announced that it would give Queanbeyan 1000 trees to celebrate the NSW city's 175th birthday - albeit all planted on the ACT side of the border.
The trees, a mixture of exotics and natives, would create a green avenue between the neighbours.
Territory and Municipal Services says so far about 200 oak trees have been planted, with the natives and evergreens to be planted around April.
As part of the deal, contractor Provincial Plants and Landscapes at Pialligo is responsible for maintaining the trees for the first 12 months, including watering them.
Project supervisor Justin Hurley Ley said the trees were being watered about twice a week, using about 6000 litres of water. The company sourced the water from a hydrant and had factored in the bill to TAMS as part of its deal.
The watering would eventually pull back to weekly and monthly.
If any trees do not survive the 12-month consolidation period, they must be replaced by the contractor.
Responsibility for the trees would then shift to TAMS.
Luke Bulkeley, acting manager of Urban Treescapes within TAMS, said young street trees across Canberra - those between three and five years - continued to be watered by the directorate about once a month using non-potable water sourced from Lake Burley Griffin, Lake Tuggeranong, Lake Ginninderra and Yerrabi Pond. Each month, nine trucks water about 21,000 trees - between three and five years old - on nature strips and parks.
New trees planted by a contractor were cared by them generally for at least the first summer.
Mr Bulkeley said once established, the avenue of trees between Canberra and Queanbeyan would be impressive.
''It should look really good, it could be something quite grand,'' he said.
Mr Bulkeley asked Canberra residents to embrace some of their famous community spirit and help to water a neighbourhood tree or two.
An eight-litre bucket of water once a week could make the difference to the survival or not of a young tree in the heatwave conditions.