Yes, you could do all this, or you could use Apple Remote Desktop.

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treck

And that is actually what the hint author is telling us how to do through an ssh-tunnel. This is very practical, if we for example only have ssh access through the firewall and or router.

There are many instances in which an ssh session can be established but a remote desktop session cannot. This hint combined with reverse ssh tunnels allows extremely flexible setups to be achieved, provided you have an ssh server that can be reached from the public net, and that outgoing ssh sessions are allowed from any network you use.

These instructions are fairly rigidly purposed, so it may take some gnashing to figure out how to use the vpn over ssh stuff in a different context (I'll go as far as to point folks to an ssh tunneling guide I wrote (http://www.dreness.com/ssh_tunnels.html) and no further :)