There's not much to see — a tangle of scrub at the base of a rock-strewn slope — but Rocky Point in Geelong is a site of world significance.
There was once a cave here, filled in long ago by authorities who deemed it unsafe, and a large shed that drew in water from the Barwon River and converted it into ice.
A modest plaque on a boulder scarcely does justice to its importance.
It was here in 1854 that inventor, journalist, and newspaper proprietor James Harrison had his eureka moment — successfully trapping escaping gas and using it as a refrigerant.
Harrison used a compressor to force the gas to pass through a condenser, where it cooled down and liquefied.
It was the basis of refrigeration — the same principle used to this day in refrigerators and air conditioners around the world.
Refrigeration profoundly changed the world, so why isn't James Harrison a household name?
The man behind the history
For a group of passionate Geelong locals, that question has been an all-consuming mystery for decades.
So too has their quest to have Harrison better memorialised. Their primary goal is to have a multi-million-dollar museum in his name built at Rocky Point, close to his long-forgotten cave.
It was where Harrison conducted his secret and dangerous experiments. He blew himself up at least twice, on one occasion needing hospitalisation.
Harrison manufactured the first commercially viable means of making artificial ice in large quantities.
There had been an earlier method discovered in Australia but it required expensive chemicals for every batch, so Harrison's method was big news.
Imported ice — mostly harvested from frozen lakes in the Northern Hemisphere and carefully shipped through the tropics to Australia in carefully insulated ships — was big business.
Harrison could see the potential for locally made ice, especially for better preserving food in a hot climate.
"He went on to establish ice-making factories both in the UK and right across Australia," said Dale Jennings, a former editor of the Geelong Advertiser, the newspaper Harrison founded.
His discovery
Mr Jennings said Harrison's love of fishing for additional income was pivotal in his path to inventing refrigeration.
While printing newspapers, Harrison had observed that using sulphuric ether to clean the news type made the metal cold.
So he built a machine to trap and pressurise the gas.
"He basically got the temperature down and ice crystals formed, and it was beautiful," said Graham Hobbs, a retired solicitor who's been at the helm of Harrison's cause for 25 years.
Australia's first shipment of frozen meat
In colonial times, Australia had a surplus of mutton and beef. The United Kingdom was a prime, untapped market, and Harrison saw the potential for exported frozen carcases.
In 1873, with much fanfare and great expectation, he dispatched a shipload of frozen meat from Australia to London.
"When they arrived in London there were butchers lined up on the wharf ready to take this cargo of meat, and they all went home empty-handed," Mr Chalmers added.
Bankrupted but undaunted, Harrison spent two decades in England refining and improving his ice-making machines and other inventions.
Others succeeded soon after, and frozen meat from Australia became a major industry.
In Harrison's lifetime, eight of his 10 patented inventions were commercially successful, though when he died in 1893, he left a modest estate.
Changed the world
For technology that changed the course of world history, refrigeration is high on the list.
The world's refrigeration industry commemorates Harrison's birthday — April 17. There's a building in Melbourne named after him and a major bridge in Geelong.
But collectively, the committee that's so ardently keen to commemorate this pioneer is starting to despair that a museum may never eventuate.
"We could just never get the support from council or government, federal or state, that was needed and could never get it off the ground," said Daryl McClure, a former editor of the Advertiser.
Mr Hobbs said he would like to see Harrison's story taught in schools.
Watch Tim Lee's story on ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm on Sunday, or on iview.
