In Sydney, tens of thousands turned out on Martin Place, and military bagpipers played just blocks from where a gunman and two of his hostages were killed last year when police stormed a cafe to end a deadly hostage siege.
Thousands of people from Australia, New Zealand and Turkey gathered on Saturday on the shores of Gallipoli for dawn services commemorating the 100th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of World War One.
The campaign on Turkey's Gallipoli peninsula has resonated through generations, which have mourned thousands of soldiers from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) cut down by machinegun and artillery fire as they struggled ashore on a narrow beach.
The fighting would eventually claim more than 130,000 lives, 87,000 of them on the Ottoman side.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told the crowd, many of whom spent the cold night in their sleeping bags to secure a spot at the crowded grounds, about the lives lost during the campaign, which helped forge Australia's identity.
"Like every generation since, we are here on Gallipoli, because we believe that the Anzacs represented Australians at our best," he said. "It's the perseverance of those who scaled the cliffs under a rain of fire. It's the compassion of the nurses who attended to the thousands of wounded. And it's the greatest love anyone can have: the readiness to lay down your life for your friend."
Gallipoli was the first time that soldiers from Australia and New Zealand fought under their own flags and is seared in the national consciousness as a point where their nations came of age, emerging from the shadow of the British empire.
The area has become a site of pilgrimage for visitors from the two countries, who honour their fallen in graveyards halfway around the world on ANZAC Day each year. This year is set to be the largest ever commemoration.
In Sydney, tens of thousands turned out on Martin Place, and military bagpipers played just blocks from where a gunman and two of his hostages were killed last year when police stormed a cafe to end a deadly hostage siege.
In New Zealand, the Auckland Museum estimated a turnout of 30,000 people for that city's dawn services.
But the thousands at Gallipoli were marking the anniversary amid heightened security, following a police raid in the Australian city of Melbourne last week that targeted an alleged plot to attack local celebrations there.
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