Keg De Souza – Blue Haze: Awaba

Blue Haze: Awaba follows the journey of Eucalyptus, with over 850 species, away from its culturally significant context – the Aboriginal land it comes from. At the hands of the British it was taken from Australia and promoted for being the fastest and tallest growing hardwood including in India where over 170 species were trialled, beginning in the 1840s in the Nilgiri Hills. It quickly became the main tree planted for timber plantations. ‘Nilgiri’ literally means ‘blue mountain’, originally named for the clustered bloom of the blue flowering species Strobilanthes kunthiana, but now also radiates a blue haze due to the eucalyptus plantings.