During her official address at the Konyu Cutting near the River Kwai,Ms Bryce paid tribute to the prisoners of war who worked on the railway.
Quentin Bryce... with veterans at Hellfire Pass. REUTERS
The cutting,known as Hellfire Pass,was built from 1942 to 1943 to supply Imperial Japanese Army forces in Burma.
Up to 1000 people,mostly Australian families and relatives of former POWs,gathered in the pre-dawn hours at the Konyu Cutting memorial,which has long been associated with the late Australian wartime medical surgeon Edward''Weary''Dunlop.
Ms Bryce spoke of Australians making pilgrimages to places''that war had etched and scarred''throughout the world -''the theatres of conflict,the graves and cenotaphs,the shrines and memorials,our minds and memories''.
More than 60,000 POWs - 30,000 British as well as 13,000 Australians and the rest Dutch and Americans - together with 250,000 Asian labourers - were forced to work on the rail link.
About 2800 Australians were among the 12,400 POWs who lost their lives alongside 100,000 Asian labourers. They fell victim to disease,hunger and brutality.
''Inevitably,crippling fatigue,starvation,horrific sickness,disease and death gouged their ranks,''Ms Bryce said.
But she also spoke of the''deep,generous,tender friendships''that grew as the POWs fought to survive,helping each other throughout the ordeal.
Surviving former POWs who had worked on the rail line attended the services,including the former Labor minister Tom Uren,89.
Cyril Gilbert,also 89,of Brisbane,was captured during the fall of Singapore in 1942. He said he still felt deeply the loss of mates to the atrocities of war when he visited the lawn cemetery at Kanchanaburi.
''I look there and see all my mates'graves there. Tears stream down the face. When you look at them and think they were just boys when I was there,''said Mr Gilbert,who was aged 22 when he was captured.
Mr Uren spoke of the cruelty of the Japanese army he witnessed.''I would have exterminated the Japanese from the planet without a doubt.''
But he said being sent to work in a copper smelting plant in Japan as a POW over the last nine months of captivity changed his outlook,as he saw how the local Japanese had also suffered during the war.
''I found it wasn't the Japanese I hated but militarism.''
AAP