Repairing things together Sharing skills Strengthening community
Repair it. Don’t replace it.
Bring along something that needs a little love and discover what can be repaired when skills, tools and community come together.
Before you throw it away, let’s see if we can fix it together.
Repair Café Southern Highlands hosts free community repair events where volunteer repairers help people investigate - and where possible mend - everyday household items.
You’re invited to sit down and take part in the repair, so practical knowledge and skills are shared between us, rather than handed over as a service.
Bring it
Something small enough to carry, and the story of how it broke.
Repair it together
Sit with a volunteer repairer, work out what’s wrong and have a go.
Keep it in use
Take it home working, knowing a little more than when you arrived.
If you can carry it, we’ll take a look.
Not everything can be saved, and what we can look at depends on which volunteers are with us on the day - so it’s always worth checking before you come.
Why repair?
Less waste
Keep useful things out of landfill, one mended object at a time.
More skills
Learn how things work, and how they can be maintained and repaired.
Shared knowledge
Pass practical skills from one person, and one generation, to another.
Stronger community
Somewhere to meet, contribute, learn and belong - right here in the Highlands.
We repair more than things.
A Repair Café makes conversations, confidence, curiosity - and connections between people who might otherwise never meet.
Someone arrives with a broken toaster, a torn jacket or a wobbly chair, and leaves having learned something, met someone, and saved a useful object from the bin.
Know how to fix something? We’d love to meet you.
Useful skills come in every shape - and you don’t have to be an expert repairer. Curiosity, patience and a willingness to have a go count for a great deal.
We also need people to welcome visitors, organise events, make the tea and coffee, take photographs, help with the paperwork - and simply make people feel at home.
Become a Repair Café VolunteerSkills are worth passing on.
Alongside our repair days we’re building workshops, demonstrations, school programs, mentoring and community learning - so that knowing how to mend a hem, rewire a lamp or true a wheel doesn’t quietly disappear with the generation that learned it.
A morning at the Repair Café.
Here’s Repair Café North Sydney at work. It’s the same idea we’re building here - and the same hope: to connect with as many locals as they have, around a table of things worth keeping.
Just getting started.
Our first {{ season }} season is under way. Here’s what’s in place, what we’re aiming for, and why it matters.
Our aims for our first {{ season }} season
The bigger picture
tonnes of electronic waste thrown out around the world in a single year (2022). Source: Global E-waste Monitor 2024
We’ll be marking International Repair Day this October - see what’s on worldwide.
Our next Repair Café
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International Repair Day
Every October, repair cafés, fix-it groups and menders around the world mark the same day - a reminder that the things we own can last far longer than we’re told.
It falls just before our first café, so we’ll be joining in. Activities to be confirmed - we’ll post them here closer to the day.
Our Partners and Supporters
We work alongside local councils, community organisations, schools, businesses, charities and quiet supporters across the Highlands. Interested in partnering with us?
What’s being repaired in the Highlands?
Hear about upcoming Repair Cafés, workshops, volunteer opportunities and community projects. A few emails a year, no more.
Bring it along and stay a while - we fix things with you, not for you.