Prime Minister Tony Abbott has laid a floral tribute at a Dutch military barracks where the MH17 dead are being identified before revealing Australian victims will be flown to Melbourne then formally released to relatives.
Sixty-five victims from Malaysia Airlines flight 17 have been identified so far including 21 whose nationality hasn't been revealed.
Mr Abbott on Monday said it wasn't up to the government to announce who'd been identified.
Rather, the prime minister said, families would be informed and then it was up to them to decide what would happen next.
Mr Abbott told reporters repatriation arrangements would also be up to next of kin.
The government has offered to fly relatives to the Netherlands so they can accompany their loved ones back home.
The PM said the bodies will be flown to a mortuary in Melbourne where paperwork will be completed before the victims are formally released to their families.
But Mr Abbott warned the identification process could still run for months.
"Operation Bring Them Home still has quite a way to go," he told reporters after laying a bouquet of native flowers at the gates of Hilversum military barracks.
"Yes the initial phase of searching in eastern Ukraine is over for the time being but it is highly likely that we'll want to go back in again at some stage (and) obviously our ability to go back in will depend very much upon the security situation on the ground."
The Liberal leader said the situation in the rebel-controlled territory could be "substantially different" in a month or two, making a more thorough search possible.
The PM wants to "ensure that no Australian is left untended in a foreign field".
Some 200 Australian Federal Police (AFP) personnel were deployed as part of Operation Bring Them Home.
Most are now in the process of returning to Australia but around 20 forensic experts remain at Hilversum working to identify victims using DNA, fingerprints and dental records.
AFP chief scientist Simon Walsh on Monday said Australian families would be notified officially when their loved ones had been identified and they'd then decide whether to make that information public.
Dutch authorities are expected to update official figures each Friday.
But Dr Walsh warned that even if Australian nationals weren't listed "please don't make the assumption that that means no Australians have been identified".
He told reporters that finalising the identification process would "take as long as it takes".
Mr Abbott said while everyone was keen for the identification underway at Hilversum to be as swift as possible it couldn't be rushed.
"While much has been done over the last few weeks much does remain to be done and this could take months rather than weeks," he said.
Thirty-eight people who called Australia home were killed on July 17 when MH17 was blasted out of the sky over eastern Ukraine.
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