Season 7, Episode 11: Living Regional, Rural, and Remote as a Neurodivergent Person with Avril Fazel
This week, Monique chats with Avril Fazel about living in regional, rural, and remote areas as a neurodivergent person.
Avril lives on the lands of Kuungkari, Bidjera and Inningai peoples, between the rural towns of Blackall and Tambo in outback Queensland. She identifies as an intersectional feminist with lived experiences in mental illness and neurodivergence, and her social discourse is influenced by her backgrounds in education, community work, and being a local grazier.
Monique and Avril cover:
How Avril thinks about neurodivergence and the importance of curiosity.
Avril’s path to understanding her own neurodivergence and to diagnosis at 50.
Barriers to services when living rural and remote.
The proportion of people living regional, rural, and remote experiencing disability, and why neurodivergent folk might gravitate to these areas.
Avril’s experience of community in her local area, and balancing solitude with community engagement.
Avril’s experience of the nature and sensory-based components of living rurally.
How Avril’s deep interest in understanding different ways of learning impacted her teaching.
The importance of transparent communication and modelling self-understanding and self-regulation strategies when teaching kids.
Avril’s current special interests.
[00:01:10] How Avril thinks about neurodivergence and the importance of curiosity
Key Takeaways:
Avril sees neurodivergence as an invitation to curiosity. When someone uses the term or identifies as neurodivergent, she feels drawn to ask, “How’s that for you?” rather than assume a fixed meaning.
She appreciates that the term “neurodivergent” opens the door to conversations beyond medical diagnoses, allowing people to explore commonalities and differences in lived experience without rigid definitions.
While acknowledging the value of medical diagnoses, Avril emphasises the importance of keeping neurodivergence rooted in its original intention as a social movement, not just a clinical label.
She highlights the evolution of language and concepts around neurodivergence, from early frameworks like “Asperger’s” to broader, more inclusive understandings that reflect ongoing learning and unlearning within the community.
Avril believes that maintaining curiosity and dialogue is essential to progress, urging continued momentum toward social recognition and rights, like those outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
[00:09:45] Avril’s path to understanding her own neurodivergence and to diagnosis at 50
Key Takeaways:
Avril suspected she was neurodivergent for many years but was repeatedly told that this couldn’t be the case because she was “too empathetic,” “too people-oriented,” or “too intelligent” to be Autistic.
Her school years in the 1970s and ’80s were marked by a deep sense of difference, frequently being corrected for talking too loudly, saying inappropriate things, or being overly passionate, yet support or understanding was nonexistent for girls like her.
While teaching at various schools, Avril consistently found herself connecting deeply with Autistic students and naturally using strategies that supported them — strategies that also worked well for her.
Avril pursued a formal assessment and was diagnosed as Autistic at age 50. The validation was both personal and revealing: her psychologist recognised the toll masking had taken on her mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
Despite working in education, Avril reflects on how many colleagues still couldn’t see her neurodivergence, reinforcing the importance of the neurodiversity paradigm in opening space for honest, non-pathologising conversations and recognition.
“One of the things that’s most spectacular out here, but it actually freaks some people out, is the bigness of our sky. If you’re in one of our paddocks, you’ll stand there with stars from horizon to horizon.
A visitor once said, “Oh yeah, it looks just like when you go to a planetarium.”
And I’m going, “No. Other way. When you go to a planetarium, it looks like this.””
Barriers to services when living rural and remote
Key Takeaways:
Getting a diagnosis while living rurally involves significant executive functioning and financial strain; people often have to travel hundreds of kilometres, spend large sums on transport, take time off work, and hope the provider is the right fit.
Access to specialist services is extremely limited in remote regions, with some areas having no local psychologists or neurodivergence-trained providers and only occasional visits from specialists or psychiatrists.
The Queensland Government’s Assessment and Referral Team (ART) has helped bridge some gaps by guiding people through the diagnosis and NDIS application process, reducing the mental load of navigating it alone.
Even when NDIS access is granted, the lack of local providers and informed service options often limits real support, and misunderstandings about Autism can lead to dismissive or even harmful interactions.
While rural communities often build grassroots solutions like social prescribing or community-based support, Avril stresses that relying on local improvisation shouldn’t be necessary. Autistic people deserve equitable access to knowledgeable care and services, regardless of where they live.
The proportion of people living regional, rural, and remote areas experiencing disability, and why neurodivergent folk might gravitate to these areas
Key Takeaways:
Government data shows a significantly higher proportion of people living with disability in regional (23.4%) and remote (19%) areas compared to major cities (15.4%), despite many in rural areas still lacking access to formal diagnosis.
Avril suggests that certain neurodivergent traits, like tolerance for solitude and lateral thinking, may have made rural life a natural fit for some early settlers and may continue to draw neurodivergent people to these environments.
Rural, regional, and remote areas are often treated as a single category, but their diversity is vast. Solutions that work in one area may not translate elsewhere, making metro-centric models ineffective and inappropriate.
Despite hosting one third of Australia’s population and producing the majority of Australia’s exports and food, regional, rural, and remote areas lack equitable access to disability support, breaching Australia’s own commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Monique reflects on how regional environments can be well-suited to neurodivergent sensory needs, offering calmer, quieter spaces compared to overstimulating city life, though access to specialist care remains a driving factor for staying in urban centres.
[00:30:42] Avril’s experience of community in her local area, and balancing solitude with community engagement
Key Takeaways:
Living 40 kilometres out of town gives Avril the solitude and sensory peace she needs. She can spend entire weekends non-verbal without interruption, and her home functions as a self-contained haven for food, rest, creativity, and stress relief.
After sustaining a psychiatric injury, Avril’s life changed dramatically, prompting her to step away from traditional teaching. Discovering she was also ADHD, and finding medication that brought clarity, was a turning point she wishes had come earlier.
Rural life offers her a rhythm and familiarity that helps regulate her nervous system: recognising cars, preparing scripts for local shop staff, and engaging in low-pressure social presence like watching footy from the car. Community events have offered diverse opportunities for meaningful contribution, from fundraising to heritage projects.
Avril has curated and led numerous local initiatives, such as playgroups, women’s events, memorial statues, and educational documentaries. Her approach includes decentralising leadership, matching tasks to people’s strengths, and igniting change with limited resources.
Deep connection to nature, animals, and the land is central to Avril’s wellbeing. As both a grazier and educator, she’s embraced low-stress cattle handling and finds immense calm in working with herd animals, a skill enhanced by learning directly from Temple Grandin during a rare workshop in Muttaburra.
[00:50:34] Avril’s experience of the nature and sensory-based components of living rurally
Key takeaways:
Avril became a grazier through her relationship with her partner, Peter, but chose to actively engage in the work because of her deep love of animals and the sensory joy she finds in being outdoors — riding a motorbike through a paddock, working silently with cattle, and immersing herself in nature.
Sensory life in rural areas is quieter, more spacious, and socially predictable. Familiar faces, consistent routines, and scripted conversations around the weather or each other’s interests offer grounding and reduce the cognitive load of social interaction.
The vastness and silence of the landscape can be disorienting for some, but Avril finds deep comfort and beauty in it, from the rhythmic clank of an old windmill to stargazing under a dark sky uninterrupted by artificial light.
Monique reflects on growing up in the rainforest, where nature provided constant, soothing sensory input, wind moving through grass, insect and animal sounds, and ambient background noise that was gently stimulating without overwhelming. She contrasts this with the unpredictable intensity of urban environments, which can be far more taxing for the nervous system.
Avril’s neurodivergent perspective fuels her teaching by driving her to connect curriculum content directly to her local town and students’ lives. She dives deeply into local history, seeks meaningful patterns, and uses Universal Design for Learning to create context-rich lessons, centring her students’ identities and showing them that their community and culture matter.
[01:03:08] How Avril’s deep interest in understanding different ways of learning impacted her teaching
Key takeaways:
Teaching has always been Avril’s enduring special interest. Being neurodivergent helped her reflect deeply on how people think and learn, sparking a lifelong drive to understand and adapt educational approaches for diverse minds.
Her early experiences with students who struggled with reading led her to seek out literacy training designed for primary teachers, which profoundly reshaped her high school science teaching and sparked a commitment to removing learning barriers.
Avril adapted creatively for neurodivergent and struggling students by integrating mind maps, stretch-to-sketch drawing techniques, and metacognitive tools, such as Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, allowing students to access content through the thinking and expression styles that suited them best.
She cultivated a calm, sensory-considerate classroom environment by transparently explaining her own sensitivities, offering options like quiet corners or talk-friendly zones, and inviting students to co-create a space that supported everyone’s needs.
Avril normalised difference and shared power in the classroom, encouraging students to become the experts when their skills exceeded her own, especially in areas like drawing or memory techniques, fostering mutual respect and deeper engagement.
The importance of transparent communication and modelling self-understanding and self-regulation strategies when teaching kids
Key takeaways:
Avril prioritised transparent, compassionate communication with students, acknowledging her own emotional state when needed, offering clear choices, and modelling self-regulation strategies in real time without shaming or power plays.
Sharing her neurodivergent ways of operating, even before having a formal label, created a ripple effect — normalising difference, inspiring families to seek support, and helping cultivate a local network of parents and carers supporting one another.
She used moments of social tension, like teasing or misgendering, to interrupt harmful dynamics with clarity, humour, and reframing behaviour without public shaming and always offering students a path to repair and reflection.
Avril explains that being curious, not reactive, is key to working with neurodivergent students. Dysregulation often stems from unseen antecedents that may go back days or weeks, and rushing to conclusions risks reinforcing bias rather than understanding.
Her teaching legacy is reciprocal: students not only benefited from her adaptive and relational style, but also helped her recognise her own neurodivergence, support her healing, and remind her of the value she continues to bring beyond the classroom.
[01:25:10] Avril’s current special interests
Key takeaways:
Due to the impact of her psychiatric injury, Avril’s special interests aren’t as intense as they once were, though education remains a steady, enduring passion.
She’s currently focusing on improving her swimming technique with the help of a former student, finding joy and challenge in the process, even if progress comes in loops rather than straight lines.
Avril is developing a strong new interest in training assistance dogs, especially in light of proposed national regulations that could disadvantage people in rural and remote areas due to access and cost barriers.
She advocates for the unique value of assistance animals in regional contexts and recently submitted feedback on the draft regulations, highlighting overlooked rural needs.
Reflecting on her teaching, Avril shares how she would praise students by celebrating their brains — focusing on neural growth and curiosity rather than performance alone — reinforcing her relational, neuro-affirming approach to learning.
Things We Mentioned:
Queensland State Government’s Assessment and Referral Team (ART)
Fact sheet on disability access to the NDIS in rural Australia.
Check-UP Access for All project - an education tool and app to help medical and allied staff better understand disability.
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats
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