Anzac message resonates across generations at Port Fairy | Photos

Students from both Port Fairy primary schools and Brauer College spoke at the ceremony with many giving moving presentations that drew from own research into the service of Australian defence personnel.

The presentations to the large crowd of about 500 people at Port Fairy's Reardon Theatre prompted Port Fairy RSL sub branch president Jim Lane to hail the students as "magnificent" and ready to make a contribution to Australia's leadership.

The ceremony did not disappoint Port Fairy's reputation for staging excellent community events and the town put in a big effort for this year's Anzac Day centenary.

The town's Anzac Day parade was a community one with hundreds of people from the Reardon Theatre audience walking behind former servicemen and women down Bank Street to the town's main war memorial in Railway Place.

The presentations in the theatre included recitations of old and new poems about the sacrifice of the First World War soldiers as well as the details of the 24 men from the Moyne Shire who lost their lives in the Great War.

Guest speaker Kadir Zehir, a Port Fairy resident and former Turkish national, said the Gallipoli campaign was a formative event not only for Australia but for the Republic of Turkey that was established in 1923, headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the leader of the Turkish forces at Gallipoli.

However he said there were no winners from wars and there were many other ways of influencing global affairs than through wars.

Ataturk believed teachers saved nations because they influenced young people who were the future of their nations, Mr Zehir said.

He cited Port Fairy resident Bob Handy's work for Red Cross in international disasters as one way that Australians could make the world a better place.

Mr Zehir, who has led tours to Gallipoli both when he lived in Turkey and from Australia, said few of the people he took there did not shed tears.

ehimmelreich@fairfaxmedia.com.au