We sat on the grass and spread out a picnic rug. There were hundreds of other people in the park, all ages, doing the same. It was a balmy night in North Fremantle. A seven-piece Indigenous band from Broome, the Pigram Brothers, were playing their annual concert.

Before the concert we had done very ordinary things, but at the time they felt illicit. We went to the bottle shop and got a six-pack of beer and a can of premixed gin and tonic. We then went to the fish-and-chip shop and ordered flake and chips.

When we entered the park at twilight, though, there were no barrier gates, bag checks or security guards in high-vis. Drinking the beer from glass while watching live music and eating food that we had brought in ourselves seemed like a scene from a more idyllic, regulation-lite past. But that evening was also tinged with a strange kind of anxiety, as if we were doing something wrong and at any moment a security guard could approach us, confiscate the beers and throw out the food.

I had been socialising in Sydney far too long and had become accustomed to the new order. This new order involved maximum incursion into what should be a simple process of eating, drinking and watching music. The queues and bag checks; police and sniffer dogs; alcohol or other drinks confiscated; no bringing in your own food; 1.30am lockouts and 3am last drinks (although curiously this law does not apply to Sydney’s casino), and no shots after midnight.

But it’s more than just overregulation that’s occurring in Sydney. It’s the corporatisation of fun and community. A whole capitalist enterprise overlays an event as simple as listening to music played outdoors. Banning BYO everything, setting up a high fence and heavily policing the perimeter effectively locks in punters into an economic ecosystem. If you want to eat and drink, you’re forced to line up with everyone else to get something soggy from a food van and a measly measure of wine from a plastic cup at non-competitive, massively inflated prices.

Sometimes you only know that a certain way of life is gone when you get a taste of it in another place. Like when you see a brass band marching in formation through the streets of New Orleans and realise you’d need a licence for that in Melbourne. Or when you drink wine and eat cheese at a park in Paris and don’t have to hide behind a tree.

At the concert in Fremantle, there was no one selling anything. How nice it was to unwrap the fish from its paper, steaming and fresh from the shop, and sit around sharing the extra chips with those around us.

A whole capitalist enterprise overlays an event as simple as listening to music played outdoors

We watched the sun set over the Swan River behind the stage and, when the show wrapped up a little after 9pm (following a group singalong to From Little Things Big Things Grow), people packed up and left the park in what can only be described as an orderly fashion.

It wasn’t simply nostalgia that I felt in Fremantle that night, but a sadness that these types of events feel so rare in Melbourne or Sydney now. It’s the sadness that comes from realising that fun, entertainment and community gatherings have moved so completely into a regulated, neoliberal space.

It’s realising that the culture you’re participating in restricts what you can and cannot do, simply to make as much money from you as possible.

People are starting to get sick of it, and clearly still feel a desire for that sense of community that forms around gigs, parties, nightlife and clubbing. I spoke to Tyson Koh, a candidate for the New South Wales upper house for the newly formed Keep Sydney Open party. He’s part of the groundswell of opposition to the increasing policing of culture – and that includes festivals being shut down because of the onerous costs of policing events, and pubs no longer supporting live music. Koh told me the events in Sydney to which you can bring your own food and drink are now operating underground, but there’s “rarely an incident” at them.

But it’s not just about the money or the regulation. There’s a rise in loneliness and atomisation among young people, and I wonder if a factor in this is the way that governments have made it expensive, stressful and difficult to go out. It’s easier to stay at home and socialise online. But as we now know the cumulative effects of this can be disastrous, with “lonely millennials [more] likely to have mental health problems, be out of work and feel pessimistic about their ability to succeed in life than their peers who feel connected to others”.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2006 book Dancing in the Streets argues that the human desire for collective joy comes from the need to have moments of “letting go” as well as communal bonding. It should be read as a companion to Naomi Klein’s game-changing book from seven years earlier, No Logo, which charts how street and community culture became commodified.

For as long as society has existed, ceremonies, festivals and parties have been woven into our lives. We need them. When you share art and culture with others in public places without fear, over-policing, regulations or being priced out, then something magical happens. That’s where true community forms. Can we really afford to give this up without a fight?

• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist