During the One Minute's Silence the only sound (for once even the usually irreverent birds were quiet) was a Siberian breeze whistling musically in the trees.

The artificially flickering plastic candles, with which we lit up the pages of our hymn sheets, were held in gloved hands.

As dawn lit up the occasion it illuminated a sea of wind-rouged faces beneath a sea of beanies and hoods.

Not that the cold seemed to have kept many people away, however much suburban valour was required to get out of bed so early on such a bleak morning.

Yesterday's official War Memorial estimate was that 25,000 attended the 97th anniversary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli.

Master of ceremonies Ross Symonds buttered us up as things got underway: ''I hope you're all rugged up and snuggled up and I'm sure you'll enjoy the ceremony and forget about the cold.''

None of this reporter's rugged-up neighbours at this morning's occasion could have peeled themselves up out of bed earlier than the Hegyi family (Zoltan and Ann and their children Katy, Emma and Ethan) from Collector. They'd gotten up at 3am. ''I think we were the first ones here,'' Ann laughed.

It was their first Canberra dawn service and after it Zoltan was very impressed. ''I think it's a great way to respect all those servicemen and servicewomen. My father was in World War II and this has been a good way to pay respect to him too.''

This reporter's modest but bemedalled neighbour at yesterday's service was Ted Bryant of Scullin. He'd served in the navy for 34 years (in all three of our aircraft carriers including HMAS Vengeance and then in destroyers) before retiring in 1981. Yesterday's morning bleakness reminded him of how, living at Tuross Heads until 2007, he was one of the originators of Anzac Day services there including a dawn service at Plantation Point with, on balmy days, a superb view of the sun coming up out of the ocean. ''It's a good spot. We used to get, big, big crowds of maybe 3000.''

There was no prospect of a very warming sun coming up yesterday morning (indeed, temperatures seemed to fall as pale daylight emerged) and it was in chilly darkness that proceedings began as usual with the sad, mood-setting hymn O Valiant Hearts.

Mr Bryant and I shared the hymn sheet and he, like lots of yesterday's dawn service-savvy, had brought an excellent torch so much more efficient than my sweet but useless artificial candle with its artificially flickering flame.

It always seems a miracle at the dawn service that so huge a crowd can achieve a minute's total silence, but yesterday's congregation achieved that miracle yet again (not a single mobile phone, not a single sneeze) save for just one totally welcome baby doing a little nattering. Usually the cockatoos and ravens cackle and shout during this grave minute but yesterday morning they too were quiet.

In his commemorative address (similarly unassisted by birdsong) Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Cairns asked: ''What causes a young man or woman to join our armed forces, knowing they might be putting their lives on the line?''

He was sure that there were all sorts of factors, including sometimes the ingredients of ''adventure'' and ''career'' and of ''lifestyle'' but that ''at some point in every soldiers' life they're confronted with the question of cost [possible cost of their lives]'' and realise that love of their country lies behind it all. He urged all of us who will never have to display that love of our country by donning uniforms and fighting, find other, local ways to express that love. He asked Australians to love Australia's valuable qualities (like our tolerance of diversity and our sense of human equality) and to fight for their survival. He begged us to love ''the poor and the marginalised and work for their betterment''.

After the national anthem the hooded and beanie-wearing streamed away, some of us with numbed extremities but with warmed hearts because there's a terrific camaraderie about being at the dawn service, all sharing the same reverent purpose. It had been a bracing dawn and so a timely reminder, as we approach our centenary year, that the site for the capital city was only eligible for consideration because it had the ''bracing climate'' the nation's movers and shakers were determined the new city had to have.