Young people including school students and cadets played a prominent role at Anzac Day events in all towns and villages, proudly wearing grandparents' or great-grandparents' medals in the marches, participating Anzac services or showing their respects at dawn services.

Moss Vale school captain Jack Hopkins, addressing a well-attended Moss Vale service, said with no World War I veterans now alive, more than ever people should remember the events and sacrifices of many young Anzacs.

"Young people of Australia should continue to support, understand and credit the Anzac spirit and tradition, taking into account that the Anzacs were mostly young people many of whom would have had their lives ahead of them," he said.

Mr Hopkins said young Australians were still losing their lives in theatres of war such as Afghanistan.

"If a conflict like the Great War did break out again, it was the young people of my age that would have signed up," he said.

"This makes Anzac Day particularly significant to young Australians today."

Mr Hopkins said a visit to Gallipoli to pay respect to the Anzacs had become a high priority for many young Australians.

"It is becoming more evident as time passes that part of our national character is linked to a distant part of the globe which still holds our lost youth of nearly a century ago," he said.

At Mittagong, 23-year-old Air League Cadet Albert Mole played the Last Post, as he has done for more than 10 years.

Frensham Year 12 student Emma Campbell spoke about her own visit Gallipoli last year.

Local schools and Air League Cadet bolstered numbers in the Southern Highlands largest parade, watched by spectators lining the street from the Visitors Information Centre to town centre and packing balconies along the route.

At the Bowral Memorial, Scouts laid 10 poppies in honour of the 10 Australian soldiers killed on duty in Afghanistan and Oxley College was named "best marching group" for the second year in a row.