Hobart's Dark Park at Dark Mofo 2016. Credit:Remi Chauvin/Mona Access is free, no age limit. There's a big bar, and there are food trucks. Oh, and there are fires everywhere. Sold iron pots, braziers full of hot coals and burning logs. Just the thing for a night when it's five degrees and the nearby mountain is snow-capped. This is Dark Park in Hobart. In and around the warehouses are high-concept art events and performances. One group is breaking up bricks, spreading the dust on the floor and then lying down and blowing pathways and clearings in the dust with their mouth. In another room, the only light comes from a moving bank of lights swinging at a solemn pace, but otherwise this soccer pitch-size room is dark.

The light walk at Vivid. Credit:Wolter Peeters It's crowded and it's the same crowd that are going to Vivid. What Bill Shorten likes to call families on the couch. There is no way this event would happen in Sydney. A cheery welcome to Hobart's Dark Park: Fear eats the soul by Michaela Gleave. Credit:Remi Chauvin/Mona There is no way a NSW government or council would allow families to get off the couch and then stumble around in the dark. The whole area would be lit up like a Swans game – which would somewhat undermine the point.

And then there are the fires. Lots of them. Standing around them are groups of people warming their hands. There's no barriers around the braziers. You can walk right up to them. It's fantastic because what happens at a fire? You greet everyone and everyone greets you. You immediately comment on the cold and then go straight to talking about what you've just seen. The Sydney Opera House lights up on the opening night of Vivid in 2015. Credit:Cole Bennetts I walked up to one as a man clapped his hands together to his friends and declared, "Alright, let's go see some more shit we don't understand!" In Sydney a symbolic fire would be lit. There would be a carefully guarded perimeter and I suspect by the time the committee finished dealing with issues of sustainability and smoke, it would be a mock electric fire powered by a battery charged on solar power during daylight. The point of Dark Mofo is to mark the winter solstice. There is no longer Australian night than the one that happens in June in Hobart.

Events should be dark, shrouded, mysterious. There should be celebration but there should also be a remembrance of the darkest parts of our being. A half-hour away from the barely maintained old railyards of Dark Park is the stinking decay of Willow Court. Australia's godfather of performance art and also drawer and printmaker, Mike Parr is huddled in a bare concrete room. He's channelling the misery that oozes out of the walls of this former mental asylum – a place that Tasmanians talk about in tones of resigned despair – a psychological Port Arthur that incarcerated their more recent family members. And here we're allowed to slop through the mud and detritus of these old buildings without barricades or supervision. The success of Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art, Mona and it's attendant events like Dark Mofo is due to the singular vision of art collector David Walsh, but also the willingness of a government and a community to join in. To give it a go. On my hotel bed when I check in is a letter from the management.

It reads: " As we at the Mantra Collins Hotel do not know the full extent of the activities that may occur in our neighbourhood we are taking some precautions by offering our guests earplugs…" Sydney Opera House forecourt events are volume controlled because of complaints by residents and guests of nearby accommodation. A Sydney hotel would want to know exactly the extent of neighbourhood activities and if they didn't like them, they'd try to stop them. That's not how they do it in Hobart. James Valentine presents Afternoons on 702 ABC Sydney.