Its name is of uncertain origin, it has been split into three by Statistics New Zealand, but St Kilda is a solid seaside suburb with neither airs nor affectations. David Loughrey travelled to the wide avenues and tight grids of the city's south to get a taste, and cast a sharp eye over the numbers.
St Kilda is a pair of swollen ankles in a neatly arranged lounge room glimpsed through net curtains.
It is a sturdily built but fading clubhouse devoted to esoteric fascinations.
It is a desperately insane whale with full pink lips and cracked eyes pulled wide open to the lashings of sand whipped up by a cruel southerly.
It is the suburb by the sea.
There are facts available about St Kilda, but they are sometimes splintered and sometimes without resolution.
The suburb's name is one example.
Along with St Kildas in the heart of Melbourne and huddling west of a frozen archipelago off the coast of Scotland, the source of the name could be one thing and could be another.
One fact appears to be certain - there was no saint called ''Kilda'' by his chums.
Instead, theories suggest it could be cartographical error - it first appeared on a 1666 Dutch map - or it could be tautological word play - Tobar Childa is a place name made up of the Gaelic and Norse words for well, meaning ''well well''.
More facts can be gleaned from the last census*, however, the powers that be considered it necessary to split St Kilda into three; west, central and east St Kilda.
St Kilda east runs from Tahuna School in one corner to the Prince Albert Rd-Bayview Rd intersection in the other.
The figures show the suburb may provide something of golden opportunity for lonely men - there are 1467 ladies in an area that contains just 1215 gents.
Certainly it would be a spot for those interested in the more mature partner - the median age for east St Kilda is 42.8 years old, compared with 36.7 years for the city as a whole.
Not only that, but 24% of people in St Kilda East are aged 65 years and over, compared with just 14.9% of the total Dunedin City population.
A tour of the area on a frozen, wild Wednesday afternoon begins at Royal Cres, which transports the traveller to a solid area of quiet homes with generously proportioned avenues off to the side, complete with kowhai trees.
As it is across St Kilda, in the distance the boiling sea roars.
There are two standout features in the area.
The first is the Musselburgh Pumping Station, near St Kilda Brass, the Albion Cricket Club rooms and the St Kilda Bowling Club.
A bold, modernist architectural statement written in glass and brick, with well-appointed lawns, the station features some of the most mysterious equipment emerging triumphant from the St Kilda soil, structures certain to inspire and baffle the passer-by.
The second sits coldly in the Marlow Park playground, near the Otago Model Engineering Society, the Ocean Beach Railway and the Happy Days mini golf course.
As wind howls past power lines, lupins, toetoe and cabbage trees, the big blue whale at the centre of the park sits with an impossible, desperate smile on its face, locked in a frozen pose of demented joy, willing lost children into its gaping jaws.
Nearby the sea churns, a dark mass of foam and spray.
Central St Kilda covers an area from Prince Albert Rd west.
The main drag, of course, is a fading lady of commerce, its shops often empty and speaking the bleak language of failure.
Dairies stand tough against economic decline, staunchly dealing in pies, thickshakes, and Paddle Pops, with literary servings of Women's Weekly and TV Guide.
And not everybody has given up, with service industry offices tidying up shop fronts and moving in.
The street's residences vary from the quite smart to those that offer a street view of ripped net curtains held together by clothes pegs.
There are 786 occupied dwellings and 57 unoccupied dwellings in St Kilda central.
The unemployment rate is 9% for people aged 15 years and over, compared with 7.5% for the city as a whole.
West St Kilda drifts towards St Kilda's slightly snooty neighbour, St Clair, the home of cafe culture and fancy restaurants.
But our suburban triptych does not give up its working class roots without a fight.
Before sliding into the gentrified St C, St K proudly holds up that historic home of the uncompromising, hard-bitten racing milieu - Forbury Park - as a last hurrah.
That facility is surrounded by a solid grid of middle-class reliability, and a population with a solid commitment to copulation.
St Kilda West boasts an impressive 21% of people aged under 15 years of age, compared with 16.2% for the wider city.
That commitment to the joy of reproduction is made especially impressive when one takes into account 24.3% are separated, divorced or widowed, compared to a wider Dunedin figure of about 16%.
Its inhabitants may be born, taste joy and defeat, live, grow old and die, but St Kilda continues, changing little and refusing to drift free of its roots, clinging as it does, to a sometimes wild coast.
*Figures from Statistics New Zealand, 2013 census.
