Travis Mackay: Quicksand Limited Director says gold mining operation will use 'non-destructive' methods

A Wellington company wants to prospect for gold near a nature reserve.

A local family has applied for permits to explore for gold and other minerals directly next door to Zealandia eco-sanctuary. 

Quicksand Limited Director Travis Mackay says they've got a permit for panning at the moment. 

He says they're exploring non-destructive, non-toxic methods. 

Mackay says they don't want people coming to the area thinking they can do heavier riskier operations. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now there's a bit of angst and Wellington because MB
is currently considering a number of applications from people who
want to explore for gold right next to Zilandia. One
permit has already been issued and it's been issued to
Travis MacKaye High Travis May, I'm very well, thank you.
So are you going to do some mining? Are you?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I wouldn't call it mining so much, but if you
on some panning, you're going to.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Do some panning.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah. Do you think we don't have any interest in
doing any mining or digging up the land to pull
out minerals to destroy something that we came here to enjoy,
since that would be stupid.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Your permit is just for panning, is it?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
At the moments? For panning? But we are going for
the next level of permit, but that's for a different
that's for a different purposes because we have a mining
R and D company and that company is exploring different
ways of non destructive, non toxic ways of recovering minerals.
So yeah, very difficultly, it's a sort of sluicest So

(00:58):
just because get getting all the signs right and anything
else works out, you can get the fines out without
having to use mercury and things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Oh right, okay, are you are you convinced that there's
gold there?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
There's gold everywhere, and he's on it's in all the Greeks.
There's alluvial gold pretty much everywhere. And we're with there's
a mineral spring that feeds up through whatever, then that
there's the gold there, but it's there's no more here
than there is anywhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Is there enough gold to sort of make a living
off or is it just for a bit of a hop?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Oh? Absolutely absolutely not. This is costom me your fortune.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Why are you doing in Travis?

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Because I like building stuff and and I'd like to
find a better way of doing it, because my son
likes it, and because it's fun. It's singing up my boy.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Okay, So you're just the permits of people in Wellington
can settle down. It's just a little bit of a
bit of panning and digging and nothing massive.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Nothing massive, nothing at all. There's the last thing we
want up here, and last thing I wants the whole
of people coming up here thinking that they can do
that up here, because it's not what this place is about.
The space we moved up because it's beautiful. It's an
awesome places to live, and we have zero interested ashowing
that anyone that comes up here thinking otherwise, and I
won't swear, but they can go.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Okay, And even the sluicing stuff that you're going to
do when you get your next permit, that's not going
to make the place look ugly, is it.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
No, it's so it's the soluice is a dread soluze,
so it would literally be removing as it fills. Is one,
so I can't stack up any fish or anything like that.
It's it's a it's a soft one that gets gravity feed.
It's it's all done, and it's quite bulliant, fin insist
to myself, but it's it's it's harmless and it just
takes gravel of a creek and it pushes it down
a little bit further than the cycles back to where

(02:34):
it was. All would do really is take out the
alga and stuffware from the creek, cleans that out and
it's this golden there would find it. But we don't
want to do that here anyway. This is frust to
make machines that people can use elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Oh okay, Travis, listen, good luck with that good luck
with with the Angst in Wellington as Travis McKay, who's
the director of quicksand Limited. For more from Hither Duplassy
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