About 1,500 kilograms of household goods were diverted from landfill during the first two years of Repair Café The Gap, where local volunteers worked their way through 695 broken items brought in by 574 people.
Some were the usual household casualties — lamps, coffee machines, kitchen mixers, clothing, bicycles and garden tools. Others had been around much longer than the café itself, including a 90-year-old garden fork passed from grandfather to father and then granddaughter. When it arrived needing a new handle, one of the volunteers fitted one and sent it home ready for another stint in the garden.
There was also a winding clock dating from the 1920s, picked up for $40 at a garage sale and brought in after a fall damaged some of its wooden fretwork. Together, those objects sit among hundreds that crossed the café’s workbenches between its launch in March 2022 and second anniversary in 2024.
The breakdown gives an idea of what tends to fail around The Gap. Electrical and electronic goods accounted for 56 per cent of items presented during those first two years, while textiles made up 11 per cent. Another 9 per cent involved sharpening knives, scissors and garden tools.
Repair Café The Gap is still operating more than four years after it began, with volunteers due back at Rivercity Church on Settlement Road on Saturday, 19 September. The upcoming session provides a timely reason to look again at an operation that, even by its two-year mark, had already diverted about one-and-a-half tonnes of belongings from landfill.
Read: How Repair Cafe The Gap Champions Sustainability
What Comes Across the Workbench
The 695-item figure is now more than two years old, and no newer cumulative total appears to have been published. What those early records do show is how varied the work became quite quickly.
People do not simply leave a broken appliance at the door and collect it later. The Repair Café model has owners sit with the repairer and, where practical, become involved in working out what failed and how it might be put right. That has required a fairly eclectic collection of local know-how, with early sessions drawing people experienced in sewing, electrical work, bicycles, sharpening and general repairs.
Not every job is necessarily worth much in dollar terms. That 1920s clock had cost its owner only $40, while an old garden fork could easily have been replaced with something new. Yet the fork had already survived three generations of one family, which made replacing its handle a rather different proposition from buying another one.
That distinction — between what something costs and whether somebody wants to keep it — is part of what ends up on the benches alongside the screwdrivers, sewing machines and other tools.
The Facebook Question That Started It
The Gap café grew from a local conversation in 2022, after Kirsty Augustine, who had seen similar operations elsewhere in Brisbane, asked through a community Facebook group whether there was enough interest to establish one locally.
There was enough support to form a steering group, with early reporting identifying Augustine alongside Ann Edwards, Erin De Brincat, Julie Delaforce and Padma Lal. The first Repair Café The Gap session followed in March 2022, and one of those early gatherings had six repairers working across different types of jobs.
Since then, the café has moved to the basement of Rivercity Church at 59 Settlement Road and generally operates on the third Saturday of the month.
The model predates the local operation by more than a decade. Martine Postma organised the first Repair Café in Amsterdam in October 2009, bringing owners of broken possessions together with people who could help repair them. The idea subsequently spread internationally, eventually providing the model picked up in The Gap.
Read: From Hobby Games To Coffee, The Gap Earns Six Category Honours
Four Years On, The Benches Are Still Busy
The range of things accepted in The Gap remains broad. Current information lists electrical appliances up to 240 volts, clocks, bicycles, electronics and IT equipment, tools, toys, clothing and small pieces of furniture, while anything too large for its owner to carry is excluded.
There is no charge for the repair work, although owners may need to pay for replacement parts and donations are accepted towards the café’s running expenses. Bookings are preferred rather than compulsory.
The next session is scheduled for Saturday, 19 September at Rivercity Church Basement on Settlement Road, giving locals another opportunity to bring something broken across the workbench rather than immediately replace it.
The latest published tally stops at March 2024, when 695 items had been brought in by 574 people and about 1,500 kilograms had been diverted from landfill. With another two-and-a-half years of sessions since then, the café’s own records should now have quite a bit more to say about what The Gap has managed to keep in use.
Updated 28-Sept-2026