Repair Cafe Perth

Please come along to our next event on the morning of Saturday 17th October 2026. Check our webpage for details.
www.repaircafeperth.org.au

At the last Repair Café Perth, a couple of weeks ago our visitor, Juanita, brought in her Bluetooth speaker. It wasn't working.

Hubert, discussed it with Dougie. Both are our electronics volunteers, and he opened a speaker and discovered that the battery was disconnected. It was one that needed to be wired in.

Hubert explained to Juanita that although he connected wires to the battery there seemed to be no sign of life.

Juanita had bought this quality speaker in Hong Kong in 2012. She thought it was still the best speaker. It was a Nakamichi and she was really impressed with the sound.

Dougie went ahead and soldered the wires back onto the speaker battery. And Juanita was thrilled when it worked and connected with Bluetooth.

We had one very happy customer! And another item saved from landfill.

We are grateful to for their support and availability of the North Perth Town Hall every month.

At our September Repair Café Perth event on the third Saturday of the month Brigit brought in her lunch cooler bag.

Many of us have these and how annoying when the zip and binding stitches come loose?!

Sharon, our textile volunteer, carefully matched the zip and binding position so that it was secure again then slowly machine stitched it was back in place.

Brigit was very pleased to be able to use this useful item and not have to throw it into landfill.

Our next event will be on Saturday 17th October at our usual venue, North Perth Town Hall 26 View Street, in the morning.

It will the International Repair Day so make it the day you come along with your damaged thing. We shall try to help you.

One of our visitors, Dorothy, brought in her antique telephone. She had brought it in once before and was advised to download the instructions for connecting it to the landline socket in her home.

Today she needed help to ensure it was set up correctly. Our electronics volunteer Dougie checked the plug and opened the electronics in the Dial Gizmo which Dorothy had bought in.
Reading the instructions he found a series of switches that needed to be set for her particular phone to register the dial layouts. Inside the Dialgizmo Dougie found the switches and explained to Dorothy what she needed to test.

Dorothy had been before and was given a website to print off instructions. This helped Dougie explain what next. It couldn't be tested because there wasn't a landline wall access in the hall.

It is always interesting and surprising what items come in with our visitors who need help.
This was unusual and a learning experience for everyone.

Our textile volunteer, Helen, had a visitor at the previous Repair Café Perth, Carol, who brought in her electric vehicle (EV) charger cord. It wasn't the actual electric cord that needed repair but its heavy duty Velcro strap organiser.

Carol explained that she had stood on the Velcro cord end and it had snapped off. This meant she couldn't secure the EV cord tidily.

Helen careful ensured that she had the end correctly oriented before machine stitching it back into position.

Carol was very happy with the result and rang the 'Fixed It' bell. This was a quick and easy repair.

Please check our website at
www.repaircafeperth.org.au/FAQ
for the sorts of repairs that our volunteers can help you with. Also have a scroll through the previous Facebook posts for ideas.

Edit: I may have misheard the store that was suggested. Presumably a 240V plug needs an appropriately rated fuse. Thank you for clarification in the comments.

This morning our Repair Café Perth visitor, Juanita, brought in her World Travel adaptor. She explained to our devices' volunteer, David, that none of the selected options worked.

Luckily David deduced that if the problem wasn't a single selection that failed, it was probably a fuse.

There was some miniscule writing underneath the unit and a very small slotted circle.

And he identified that it needed a 2.5amp fuse.

He explained you can use a small coin to open these slotted access areas. He opened it and found a fuse. It had a small residue of black inside the fuse which presumably meant it had blown.

He advised Juanita to find an suitable outlet who would surely be able to sell her a 240VAC replacement.

Juanita was very pleased with this outcome. We learnt how a simple non-functioning electronic power plug can be fixed. Happy travelling.

Today it's Repair Café Perth morning. 😊

Bring along your broken items that our volunteers are gearing up for right now. We will be set up at North Perth Town Hall, 26 View Street from 9:30am until 11:30am.

See our website at
www.repaircafeperth.org.au/FAQ for ideas about what to bring.

A huge appreciation call to City of Vincent for the venue and annual support.

Are you ready come to our Repair Cafe Perth event tomorrow morning Saturday 19th September? We are at North Perth Town Hall 26 View Street from 9:30am to 11:30am.

Please come early enough for your item to be assessed, seen by our volunteer team and hopefully get your item repaired.

Bruce and Bernie are our Repair Café Perth general repairs' volunteers. It often involves those random repairs which includes gluing (if Lucy, our 'Glue, Tape and String volunteer is unavailable). Between them they all manage to troubleshoot an amazing and astonishing variety of things that are brought in for them.

Last month Trish came in with her dog Bruno. She had a mechanical apple peeler and there was a metal part that was misaligned which meant the apple skin wasn't being removed. Bruce was able to use his pliers and carefully adjusted the metal guide.

Bernie diligently tried to glue together a Harry Potter wand for Spencer who watched patiently. Unfortunately gluing plastic can be variable. Unfortunately none of the available glues that Bernie tried were successful in joining the two halves. Bernie patiently held those two pieces together, over and over again. But in the end it was not repaired.

But Bernie did successful glue a hairclip. 👍 And also drilled out an old rivet, and inserted a new screw and nut on this chair. He also cut off the excess screw thread that a previous repair had left protruding. Now Kerry can safely use this chair again.

All resulted in visitors who enjoy attempts to make a difference and support our culture: Toss It? No way! You can be the difference. One item at a time.

Our Repair Café Perth event is on again this Saturday 19th September at North Perth Town Hall, 26 View Street between 9:30am and 11:30am.

Last month our device's team David, Tom and Hubert were kept busy helping our visitors with their laptops, tablets, operating systems and little electronic issues.

At one point David was sidetracked to a robotic vacuum cleaner whose wheel wasn't spinning. Tom tried to repair a very badly corroded bathroom fan activator, and then Brittany's 2004 Tamagotchi with an unresponsive middle button.

Hubert helped Yuko with a very old laptop. He assisted by doing a Windows update but it was very, very slow and may need an overnight wait to complete.

Our volunteers don't know what will come in the door this Saturday but they will give it a go.

If you have something you'd like to bring along for repair you can check out our website at
www.repaircafeperth.org.au/FAQ

Our textile volunteers were not the only ones kept busy throughout the Waste and Resource Recycling Conference. Bruce, our general repairs volunteer, fixed all sorts of things brought in: jewellery, bags, belts and more.

He also lent assistance to other stall holders in the exhibition hall: a screwdriver here or there, some assistance at the Cleanaway stall, and helping out generally.

None of these were logged on the run sheet. 😉

Please check out some of the images with descriptions below.

Our next Repair Cafe Perth event is on Saturday 19th September at North Perth Town Hall, 26 View Street between 9:30am and 11:30am.