Some Otago residents are asking how they can mobilise against a giant gold mine, poised for the fast-track bill and potentially set to start reshaping their backyard as early as February.

Australian company Santana Minerals intended to plumb the hills between Bendigo and Ophir for a $4.4 billion gold deposit, and said it would be filing for consent imminently.

A community meeting in Cromwell on Tuesday night (August 26), organised by advocacy group Sustainable Tarras, drew more than 120 residents ranging from curious to staunchly opposed.

Dunedin resident Jonathan West was in the latter category, questioning how locals had any chance against the company's agenda.

"The community are being asked to trust these guys with the future, but they're not sharing things. And what we're being told is you can't contribute to the [consent] process, and you certainly can't win, unless you have experts ... so the process is a stitch-up, that's being rammed through," he said.

An expert panel, including a Resource Management Act barrister and a sustainable tourism professor, took questions from the floor and delivered their own - at times scathing - criticisms of Santana Minerals' vision.

Local archaeologist Matthew Sole said the region's food, wine and tourism industries were already thriving - and more sustainable than mining.

"Yes, gold is long-lasting. But so, too, will be the scars. Huge open-cast pits cut into the Dunstan Range," he said.

While Santana Minerals was not directly invited, chief executive Damien Spring sat in the back corner, absorbing pointed feedback.

Sustainable Tarras member Rob van der Mark accused Santana Minerals of lacking transparency. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd

Sustainable Tarras member Rob van der Mark accused the company of refusing to release detailed visualisations of how the mine would appear for local residents.

"I'm sure they have beautiful pictures of what it's going to look like. They're not being shared with the local community. In fact, the local community is being totally ignored. If you look at all the materials Santana has released, there's no mention of the Tarras community. We might as well be Tarra-nullus, we don't exist for the company," he said.

"We would urge you, Damien, to sort of reconnect with the local community."

Santana Minerals CEO Damien Spring who says Cromwell is well placed to benefit from the mine. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd

Santana Minerals had held its own fortnightly drop-in information sessions in Tarras and Cromwell, but speakers at the meeting repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the detail provided.

In a Q & A session, community members demanded to know if they could still have a say even if the mine was fast-tracked, and whether there was any way the consent could be revoked via a change in government.

A chorus of attendees asked what the local council was doing to address concerns - and demanded to know why it did not have representatives at the meeting.

Sustainable Tarras chairperson Suze Keith said Tuesday's event - like two others in Dunedin and Wānaka - was designed to give locals a space to speak freely.

She said it was a chance to get clear answers from independent experts, free from corporate spin.

"The material Santana Minerals is publicly sharing is, in our view, very superficial ... it really doesn't describe effectively what the potential implications are," she said.

Keith said Sustainable Tarras had conducted its own research by filing Official Information Act requests and reviewing documents Santana Minerals submitted to the Australian Stock Exchange and MBIE.

"The implications are ... well, forever implications. And they're really wide-ranging. The operation of a gold mine is something that has quite a few different moving parts, all of which have different risk profiles," she said.

If approved, the project would carve out a 1000 by 850 metre open pit, plus three smaller satellite pits and a tailings dam.

Sustainable Tarras said there would be 13 million tonnes of toxic tailings - a figure confirmed by Santana Minerals.

Documents posted to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) show the company hoped to get resource consents before the end of the year, and start work on a haul road in January, and earthworks in Feburary.

Santana Minerals CEO Damien Spring who says Cromwell is well placed to benefit from the mine. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd

CEO rebuts community criticism

Speaking before the meeting, Damien Spring told RNZ Sustainable Tarras had misconstrued the company's intentions.

"Sustainable Tarras are taking a lead, and I think, in a lot of ways, misrepresenting what our proposal is. I sort of understand, because we haven't [published] the application, for example, but we've also been reasonably transparent because we have a lot of obligations under the ASX, NZX disclosure rules to be transparent," he said.

Santana Minerals said the mine would be strategically located to minimise noise, light, dust and visual impact, and that the tailings dam would be built to the highest safety standards.

Spring said 1000 people had registered expressions of interest for potential jobs at the site, and Cromwell was in a prime position to benefit from the mine.

"Sixty percent of the value of the gold will stay in New Zealand. And that's before accounting for all the wages and salaries we pay, or goods and services," he said.

Asked if the company would commit to taking responsibility if anything went wrong, Spring said that would not happen.

"Look, we will not be able to get our consents if we do not demonstrate very clearly, using our experts and the regulator's experts, [that we are] able to control our activities during operations and post-closure," he said.

In a news release on Monday, Santana Minerals listed its post-mining rehabilitation plans - which included rebuilding historic pathways through the project area for walking and cycling, building a wetland, and reshaping and rehabilitating the tailings storage facility.