On the outskirts of a tiny rural town in southern New South Wales sits an unassuming shed.
Holbrook – population 1,715 – is the unlikely home of the Southern Hemisphere's first known cryonics facility, which aims to preserve human remains in liquid nitrogen in the hope they will be able to be thawed out and reanimated in the distant future.
Within that shed, Southern Cryonics director Peter Tsolakides has rows of steel, flask-like chambers that he says are ready to receive his clients.
But experts say the dream of being brought back from the dead will "very probably never be possible" and Mr Tsolakides himself admits there are "no guarantees in cryonics".
"We're not saying we will get you back in 200 years," he says.
"We make that very clear to the people who have joined us."
But that has not been enough to deter Mr Tsolakides's clients.
He says of the 44 people on his books, 34 have already paid between $50,000 and $70,000 to try and put their exit from this world on ice.
"You could loosely call them investors," Mr Tsolakides says.
The 10 newer clients have been asked to take out a life insurance policy worth about $200,000.
Mr Tsolakides said about $50,000 was required for the process administered immediately after death, which would include a chemical infusion and staff waiting to swing into action at the moment of expiration.
He said the remaining $150,000 was the fee the company charged and that if there was any money left over from the $50,000 it would be returned to the deceased person's estate.
Mr Tsolakides acknowledged criticism that cryonics companies exploited people's vanity and fear of death, but questioned why should he tell people how to spend their money.
Most members were aged in their 40s when they signed up several years ago, he said, and had plenty of time to think it through.
The ABC was unable to contact any of the people Mr Tsolakides said he had received payments from.
At the moment, the facility has the capacity to store up to 40 bodies in tanks of liquid nitrogen, which Mr Tsolakides says resemble "very large thermos flasks".
He says the facility is primed and ready to receive its first corpse.
"We would be ready to take a patient, if we had to, next week," Mr Tsolakides said.
He said the facility could receive its first body this year, "just looking at the age of some of our members".
'Just not a reality'
Mr Tsolakides said the hope was that future medical technology would "be able to restore the patient to health".
But RMIT Centre for Molecular and Nanoscale Physics director Gary Bryant was highly doubtful that could ever happen.
"From a scientific viewpoint there is no chance that any bodies frozen using current technologies will be able to be brought back to life," he said.
University of Melbourne School of Health Sciences head Bruce Thompson, who has been involved in preliminary research into organ regeneration, agreed with Professor Bryant's assessment.
"It's fantastic to see on sci-fi movies, but at this stage it's just not a reality," Dr Thompson said.
He said the technology did not exist and was "centuries off" at best.
Dr Thompson said the research that had been done into the regeneration of "single, isolated organs" was "extremely preliminary".
Regenerating an entire human body, he said, was a "fundamentally different construct".
Nonetheless, Mr Tsolakides believes the cryonics process must begin immediately after "legal death" in order to preserve the brain.
He said experts needed to be on stand-by at the deathbed of someone wanting to be preserved.
The body would then be "infused with special chemicals" that amounted to a kind of "biological-grade anti-freeze".
Further work would then be done at a funeral parlour before the body arrived at the Holbrook facility to be immersed in liquid nitrogen.
The body "could stay in there for hundreds of years, even thousands of years, as long as they keep replenishing the liquid nitrogen," Mr Tsolakides said.
But Professor Bryant remained sceptical.
"Very probably this never will be possible," he said.
What about legalities?
The Southern Cryonics site is described on the development application as a cemetery and mortuary, Greater Hume Council has confirmed.
A Murrumbidgee Local Health District spokesperson said the facility "meets the burial-in-vault requirements".
Mr Tsolakides said: "We have gotten approval. It's as simple as that."
He said the facility could be expanded with relative ease.
"You can easily get 600 [people], if you had to get 600, on that land," he said.
The ABC has contacted NSW Health and the Greater Hume Shire Council for comment.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission declined to comment.
Christine Smyth, a Queensland-based specialist in succession law, said from a legal perspective cryonic preservation was a new "frontier".
"We're seeing more and more interest with how we deal with our remains," she said.
Ms Smyth said there were questions regarding the status of a body if the science worked.
"How do we deal with the legalities of reinstating a body?" she said.
"What does that mean? Is it the same human being?"
Ms Smyth said it was the family and friends of potentially vulnerable people convinced by the idea who would be left to deal with the complications of such choices.
She said the immediate issue with cryonics was that the money to cover the costs of storage could only be held within a certain time frame.
In NSW there is a rule against perpetuities, which means a trust can only exist for up to 80 years, unless it is a charitable trust.
"There's a limit to how long you can hold something on trust," Ms Smyth said.
"Basically, the rule against perpetuities, in layperson's terms, is that there has to be an end to the legal duties and obligations."
Marlee Viero, a wills and estates lawyer, has had one client ask about cryonics.
Ms Viero said the discussion centred on whether that was a wish the estate could support.
She said it could create work for the executor of a will – already an "onerous" job – for years after a death.
"Things that spring to my mind are coronial inquiries," Ms Viero said.
"If someone's death needs to be investigated by the coroner, how would that affect the body being frozen?"
