Exactly 4614 people* live in Northeast Valley, one of a number of indisputable facts about this sometimes enigmatic suburb. But the facts only tell half the story. Armed with a sharp eye and a feel for humanity's strengths and weaknesses, David Loughrey ventured into the valley to find the whole truth.
Northeast Valley is both a beginning and an end.
It educates our young and gently steers our elderly from this life.
It is both a bustling metropolis and an open field.
It hides mysteries so puzzling, and natural wonders to quicken the hearts of young and old.
And it all begins at the intersection of Bank St, Opoho Rd and North Rd.
That is an intersection of such dynamism and clamour, but also an early glimpse of what is to come.
Because over the perspex pyramids atop the bank, over the battlements of Knox College, and through the heat and fumes of cars straining for the green light, already in sharp relief are the bush-clad hills beyond.
But facts must lead us on this journey.
There are 2184 males and 2430 females - or 246 fewer males than females - in Northeast Valley.
That means ladies with a life plan that includes a loyal male lover will be forced, reluctantly no doubt, to migrate to find a mate.
But the realities of life are still to colour darkly the minds of the young who congregate near Crusty Corner.
Teenage girls hold hands and push and shove each other as they wait for the walk sign, while young men with drain-pipe pants, vaporisers and beards strike a more dignified air across the road.
A valley skateboarder, clearly with a more well-developed social conscience than his city brothers, stops to pick up a bicycle that fell from its stand, by chance, as he passed.
Well-defined calf muscles click by in high-heel shoes and school girls check their hair in car mirrors.
It is city life most surely.
Cars form long lines at the lights, with drivers one could see anywhere in Dunedin, gripping their steering wheels and decorating their stubborn faces with sunglasses or beards or cigarettes.
But where have they all come from?
And, more disturbingly, where are they all going?
A mere 10.5% of households in Northeast Valley have access to three or more motor vehicles, compared with 14.1% in Dunedin as a whole.
Yet this suburb is teeming with traffic, and that is not to mention what must be the busiest cycleway in Dunedin.
It is a mystery.
Infrastructure is a stand-out feature in the valley.
Internet access is enjoyed by 80.7% of households, compared with 77.8% of in the rest of Dunedin, and ultra-fast broadband cable is beginning to snake its way under the streets.
But tucked away in Glendining Ave is one of Dunedin's more indecipherable buildings.
Infrastructure it most undoubtedly is, but its purpose is no doubt now lost, or perhaps just obliquely alluded to in a file buried in a dog-eared folder misplaced by a bored clerk in a nondescript council office in 1948.
There is a warning on the door - that much is clear - but the source of any danger, or the action that can be taken to avert its deadly touch, is now lost in time.
Northeast Valley is also - and you can feel this in the gentle breeze that blows the joys and despairs of mankind down North Rd - a suburb of lonely hearts.
A massive 66.9% of people aged 15 years and over have never married, compared with a Dunedin average of just 42%.
Oh cruel and bitter irony! Northeast Valley features some of the most amatory and seductive romantic walks to be found anywhere in the city.
The climb to the viewing area of the Palmers Quarry Garden can reward couples with a panorama of deep quarry cuts fecund with native and exotic bush, while the strong, sweaty and muscular shanks of horses quiver and tense as they gallop through the cloven mounds below.
Still further up the lonely valley, behind a strong iron fence lies the jewel in the suburb's navel - Chingford Park.
The rough, strong trunks of willows, conifers and eucalypts rise erect and powerful, while the gentle bubbling of the Lindsay flows languid along the groove it has cut through the fertile earth.
From this tree-lined avenue of urgent love, the park bursts open into green and gentle parkland, that most perfect of environments to lie warm in the afterglow of the gift of love.
Considering the sad surfeit of the bliss of marriage, it is perhaps no surprise couples with children make up just 33.7% of all families in Northeast Valley, compared with 38.6% in the rest of Dunedin.
Surely, once of age, what youngsters there are must be paired off and sent to the gardens of desire, so as to ensure the future of mankind in the valley!
But, of course, no suburb of Dunedin is all about the young.
The median age is 24 years for residents of Northeast Valley, compared with 36.7 years for the rest of the city.
Despite that, the suburb cares deeply for those in the autumn years.
Past the hubbub of the town, and past the screams and cries of school children, is the Ross Home and Hospital and the wonderful Otago Community Hospice, providing rest and relief from the burden of years for those approaching the end of the journey.
And we, too, approach the end of our journey, after tripping through mystery, love, laughter and loneliness.
We find ourselves at the end of the valley itself.
And there - it is no surprise - is a crossroad, leaving us with a decision between Norwood St, or upper North Rd, both of which take us from the bounds of urbanity to the wild, rural hills.
But that is a decision that must be left to the 4614 souls who inhabit the valley.
One more fact: After English, the next most common language spoken in Northeast Valley is French, which is spoken by 3% of residents.
Doesn't that give the valley a certain je ne sais quoi?
*Statistics New Zealand 2013 Census
