Monash University Alumni News

Hazel Edwards & Meredith Fuller on Collaboration(opens in new tab)

Monash University Alumni show the power of long term collaboration

07 May 2025  ALUMNI NEWS   

Hazel Edwards and Meredith Fuller studied at Monash, Meredith as a full-time student following her HSC and Hazel as a part-time mature age student.

They didn’t meet until Meredith was working at Rusden State College as the careers counsellor and Hazel became a board member. That was 1979, and Hazel was the first female on the board.

From that moment, they kept bumping into each other.

During the 1990s, while Meredith ran a private practice in vocational counselling, she also spent several years as a consultant to Monash Staff Development, conducting group training. When she enrolled in a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing, Meredith ran into Hazel again.

“I was delighted to find Hazel teaching on the course. She was confronting and challenging and pushed for excellence from the class, while also being encouraging and supportive,” Meredith says.

Both from working-class families that valued and prioritised education, Hazel and Meredith have collaborated intermittently since their first meeting in 1979, increasing each other’s community reach on critical social issues. They believe having similar ethics, integrity, and persistence to achieve the outcome is vital.

“Meredith blends concurrent careers as a psychologist, author and documentary maker, and I’m a children’s and adult mystery writer,” says Hazel, who celebrated 50 years as a published author last year. Her books cross genres, from picture books to young adult, plays, adult fiction and non-fiction, and teaching resources.

“Our projects are extended by anticipating and answering each other’s questions. So, our skills are complementary.”

“Our first dynamic collaboration came from my lecture about neurodivergence, where Hazel was a staff member,” says Meredith.

“We spoke about her innovative work on the young adult novel she’d just written with Ryan Kennedy about gender transition. Creating new methods of problem identification, solving and education can be risky as people may fear change. I thought her work was fabulous and suggested that we make a doco for psychologists.

“While some creatives may be reluctant, collaboration can accomplish far more and more quickly. Hazel is a dynamo, and the cross-fertilisation of our ideas and networks is helpful.

“Spearheading emergent social themes is holding up a mirror to society, and it’s easier with collaborative support to make a difference.''

They have connected on several projects, including idea salons for age and skills range and raising candid concerns about new technology.

“Meredith interviewed me for her 100,000-word eBook, Understanding Family Violence, with short videos. Her eBook evolved from her collaboration with Mystical Dog Productions on the film Home Truths. Meredith wanted my comments about therapeutic writing and trauma, and my workshops on memoir narrations,” Hazel says.

The fundamentals of collaboration

“When collaborating, we recommend discussing the ‘how’ of working together and agreeing on where you’re going. Clarify how to get the best out of each other and recognise there may be unexpected outcomes,” says Meredith.

“If surrendering your intellectual and creative property, only do it with people you trust… this is your soul work.

“You need to know you are safe emotionally. Agree on the protocols of how you’ll work together and check in continually. Have a timeline! We keep our deadlines.”

“Have a letter of agreement,” Hazel says. “Some people think you can’t be a creative and be business-like, but you need to have a working legal and accounting knowledge to survive as a creator.”

Meredith adds, “If you haven’t, get advice. You need loyalty and an appreciation of knowing what you don’t know.”

Intellectual and emotional support from their husbands has enabled Hazel and Meredith to accomplish so much more. “You do need supporters,” Hazel says.

Despite numerous projects in their collective vaults of work that span more than 45 years, neither of these nationally-recognised creatives is slowing down.

Hazel has recently worked with a producer to experiment with child safety online with AI-generated drawings in family picture books, and she became the subject of art, with Deborah Niland entering her portrait of Hazel into this year’s Archibald Prize. The children’s book, There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake, written by Hazel and illustrated by Deborah, turned 45 this year.

Hazel and Meredith’s next project is designing strategies for vintage women to develop start-ups in new areas.

“Mature women innovate and are the highest growing self-employed demographic. It makes economic sense to encourage new work. Women are great at leadership and followership. Let’s support and encourage each other,” Meredith says.

“People talk about being creative, but you’ve got to be self-starting. Take risks. Continually update your skills to deal with putting new ideas into practice,” Hazel says.

“Stay curious; engage with a broad age range of people for fresh information where you can play with ideas,” Meredith says.

Hazel Edwards, OAM, M.Ed, B.Ed, B.A. (Monash) T.P.T.C is an author, educator, speaker, and patron of the Society of Women Writers, Victoria.

Meredith Fuller, OAM, B.A. Grad. Dip. Voc. Couns. M. Soc. Sci. is a psychologist, psychological spokesperson for the media, author, creative collaborator, Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society (FAPS), member of the Counselling Board of the Australian Psychological Society and Life Member of the Australian Association of Psychological Type (AUSAPT).

LINKEDIn 21/5/25

Harumi Gondo 権藤晴美Harumi Gondo 権藤晴美   • (opens in new tab)

Harumi: So, Meredith, tell me about your family of origin.

Meredith: So my mother was an INTP and she was a single parent who raised me on a pension and so while we were financially very poor, we were rich in books, reading, exploring, meaning, and she knew that education was the way through.

I was very close to my mother.

Harumi: I saw pictures of you modelling as a child. Was your mom like a stage mom?

Meredith: No, no. My mother was very shy and quiet and never expected anything of me except to help other people less fortunate and to be curious.

She had to leave school at 14 when her father left her mother. And so she taught herself everything and was always reading and thinking about the world.

And she encouraged me to follow my interests and supported my interest in learning and pursuing things that excited me. She was unable to work after my Dad left, as her mother's sister, Nancy who had Downs syndrome, came to live with us when my great grandmother died. Then my grandmother had a stroke a few years later, quickly became bedridden and had dementia. They required full time care.

And I always wanted to be a psychologist and a writer. And I did become both a psychologist and a writer.

Harumi: How did the child modelling start?

Meredith: I was a child model from three and a half to when I was twelve years old. I used to sing and dance when I was in the shops to entertain myself.

And there was a famous international photographer called Athol Shmith and he and his wife Bambi saw me and approached my mother.

I did the modelling and the acting and I loved it, but then I liked to come home and read.

It was a relief for me that I could do something to help bring in some income.

And it wasn't until much older with the MBTI that I understood it's because I’m a “performing INFP.”

In fact, a lot of actors are INFP.

Harumi: Wow interesting. So performing met your need for creativity. So that's why you also enjoyed modeling and acting because it met that need as well.

Meredith: I also have a brother who is ISFP. He left home early and lives in Byron Bay. He was a natural at ice hockey, roller skating, and playing guitar. And a vegan. He could be described as a hippie.

Harumi: And your father?

Meredith: Well my father, he was problematic. He was ESTP and left my mother when I was three.

My father is actually part Chinese. His mother was Chinese and she married a British man in Shanghai.

And when there was the war in 1941, he was placed in Stanley Prison and his family were evacuated from Hong Kong and put on a boat and ended up in Melbourne.

And that is where my father met my mother.

My mother was living with her mother who had also been deserted by her husband, of course another ESTP!  And my father was happy to move in with my mother and grandmother in their house.

Harumi: Were you close to your grandmother?

Meredith: No. I had trouble fathoming her interests.

My grandmother was ESTJ and she was always gardening and loved going to work in a post office because she was so good at maths, and always wanted to run everything.

She was very organized. And my mother was chaotic, like me.

Harumi: Do you have memories of your father when he was living with you?

Meredith: Yes, he was violent towards my mother and grandmother.

Harumi: Do you feel like that shaped how you viewed the world?

Meredith: I came to see how relationships were really important. And I had that sense that when I grew up and get married, I wanted to marry someone who was my equal and that we appreciated and valued each other, not just playing traditional roles.

Harumi: So tell me about your own marriage.

When I was in primary school, I used to read all the classics and I used to think there was some really good, good men. And I thought, that's what I want.

And I just remembered there was that theme about there'd be dreadful men in the books. And then there'd be these lovely men. And I always was attracted to that idea of a really good, ethical, moral, thoughtful man.

And so my husband, Brian AN INFJ, is a psychotherapist and he spent 30 years running his practice in psychotherapy.

But before that, he ran Client Services at the Guide Dog Association. So he was always into helping: rehab, animals, people.

Harumi Where did you meet Brian?

Meredith: I was doing my graduate diploma and I met Brian through his brother.

The journalist at work (Dr Morna Sturrock OAM) was about 50 years older than me and she advised me, “ think about someone you like and ask them if they've got a brother.”

So while I was studying my graduate diploma in 1980 I asked my friend if he had a brother by any chance?

And he said, “Have I got the brother for you! And actually I think you two would get on.”

So he organised a blind date for Brian and me.

And Brian’s this really sensitive man who wanted to help people and loved writing poetry and exploring meaning.

We just clicked and I knew that's my soulmate and he felt the same.

So we have been together ever since. We've been married 45 years.

Harumi: Wow.

Can you explain a little bit more what you mean by you knew he was your soulmate?

Meredith: When we met, we both talked about meaningful issues from the start and we liked the same books and the same music and we had that desire to help people. And so it was like, there was that mutual respect, that mutual interest, that mutual understanding and, and it was just a knowing.

Harumi: Very interesting! So tell me what happened after you graduated and met your soulmate.

Meredith: When studying I preferred Jung to Freud. After I finished my psych degree, I  decided to do therapy for three or four years with Dr. Gertrude Spencer who was a psychiatrist and a Jungian dream analyst.

After graduating I went on to work for a bit with the Commonwealth Public Service and then ran a career counselling service in a University.

And it was there that I observed that the ways in which people used the career counselling service were different.

I did my Masters Research on how HOW B Ed (Bachelor of Education) students who did not want to teach approached my service in discrete categories.

After I encountered the MBTI I came to see that I was seeing type differences.

A few years later, I met a psychometrician named Ian Kendall who was INTP. He worked at ACER, the Australian Council for Educational Research.

In Australia, in the 1980s, the government had a Training Guarantee Act. All organizations had to spend money on training. That ended by 2000.

And Myers-Briggs was new, and it was positive. And so people started to become interested in workshops. And a lot of people wanted accreditation to learn Myers-Briggs so they could run workshops.

ACER supplied resources and had a lot of material for tertiary institutions and education.

And they wanted to start accrediting people in the MBTI and Ian asked if I wanted to join him.

Since I had just left the university to run my private practice, I agreed to come on as a consultant, and we designed the first type accreditation course.

Harumi: Tell me about the course that you designed.

Meredith: It was a five-day training course. Ian did all the mathematics and the statistics, and I did the Type Theory and worked with more of the interpersonal parts.

Then Ian decided to leave. And there were other people who came on board, and we were not in philosophical alignment so I also left.

They tried for about a year to run it themselves, but they didn't have enough knowledge.

And that's when they invited Peter Geyer who is also INTP to come in and run the accreditation course.

There was also Mary McGuinness and David Freeman and other people who were running accreditation courses around that time.

At one point, there were many organizations all running accreditation courses.

They all had different flavours. For example, David Freeman's course was very much business, corporate-oriented.

Some of the courses had more of an educational or spiritual component.

There was tension about who was running what and who was taking other people's clients and all that sort of thing.

I didn't like any of that.

So I was happy to leave all of that.

Harumi: How would you describe your flavour of training?

Meredith: Experiential and helping people to appreciate who's in the room with them.

And then of course the first conference was run in 1991 as MBTI supported by ACER and Mary McGuiness.

David Freeman, who was keen to get something started on MBTI, worked to create what became AusAPT, the Australian Association for Psychological Type and from 1992 onwards there were biennial conferences.

And it grew because there were hundreds of people being trained and hundreds of people joining the association.

We had hundreds of people turning up to conferences. It was really huge in that initial early uptake period of time. There were lots of trainers, psychologists, social workers, teachers, HR people.

Harumi: And why did you continue to be involved?

Meredith: Well, I love the instrument. I love the theory.

I've been using it for 45 years.

I actually made a Type table of all the clients I ever saw, because I saw thousands of people.

And it wouldn't surprise you to know, the types who SELF-REFERRED for careers counselling were mostly INFP,  ENFP and INTP types. NEXT highest were INFJs and INTJs. But the ENTJs who came were sent by their organisations.

I rarely, if ever, saw STJs, and no STPs.

I was helping people who were in distress, who didn't fit in at work, who had difficulty in relationships, who felt lost, who felt different, who felt something wasn't right with things.

AusAPT was full of Intuitives.

In Australia, most organisations, whether they were business or anything, really, they had a lot of Sensing types.

And here was a group of people fascinated with people and theory and understanding people and making the world a better place. So it just fit really well for N’s like me who had always been rare in S groups.

So I've been in it since 1992.

In Victoria AusAPT we hosted meetings and fun group activities.

We would host a dinner, like a murder mystery dinner themed “Who killed Jung?”

And we'd have about 20 members come. They'd be given tasks, and they had to work in pairs and try and run up and down all around the house viewing the dead body and the clues and try and figure out who's killed Jung between the dinner courses.

Harumi: What do you think is the role that Intuitives play in society?

Meredith: They dream of what could be and they want to explore what could be. And they have hope for possibilities and future.

And so they'll go on these journeys of exploration and their curiosity knows no bounds.

Elizabeth Murphy who is INFP was a keynote speaker at an AusAPT conference in the early 2000s.

And back then she was saying, we've got to look at how we raise our children.

And she said, “we're going to be in trouble because we don't value and put money and time and effort into this incredibly important activity of raising children.”

And that she was very prescient because we certainly saw that come to pass.

Harumi: If we could go back in time, what do you think Australians could have done?

Meredith: I feel that one of the problems we have in Australia is that it's very patriarchal.

So women worry about raising children and men don't. Working with children was considered lower status and lower paid. So we had very few males who were primary school teachers.

Another thing that I suspect that AusAPT should have done was pointed out by another keynote speaker - Peter O'Connor in the early 2000s, a Jungian therapist.

And he said, “your organisation will fail because you don't have enough SJ people in your organisation.” (We only had one or two)

He said ‘it won’t last and will fall apart’.

And that was prescient because that's what happened over the years.

As you know we went from having hundreds of people and so much activity to 26.

By the 2010's most people had been trained in Myers Briggs, but they didn't keep going to activities, even though later there was further training.

And Sue White, one of our AusAPT Vic Presidents, and Peter Geyer, they both were offering training in step two and step three. But people didn't want to take the more sophisticated development.

Phil Kerr, Sue, and Peter attended most overseas conferences and were great ambassadors for Australia.

(Photo of Australia Type Review Cover Phil Kerr ed.)

But fickle people moved on to using tools that were new and shiny and quick.

So we've lost a lot of people. And a lot of people have died too of course.

AusAPT had lots of hard-working presidents and treasurers and office bearers over the years, but by COVID members were tired or their priorities changed. In 2017 Terry Connellan became the penultimate president. And she was very good at technology and marketing.

And she created the Zoom conferences. And they were a big success. So there was some accommodation for new, different technology.

Younger people aren’t so interested in coming to in-person groups and older people don’t have the time (often caring for grandkids in the evenings etc) There are difficulties in sustaining a voluntary group.

Harumi: And then now we have unfortunately reached the time when AusAPT is closing up. Can you tell me more about your work with family violence and how that fits with your knowledge of personality type?

Meredith: Yeah, absolutely.

From a violent family,  I felt I really wanted to help women understand what the warning signs were and enable them to have choice. I’ve often been struck with how people just partner up with someone without asking in-depth questions about each other.

Who am I? How are we together? How would we resolve conflict? What do you believe about this issue, that issue? They don't even talk about if they want children or not. And they jump into relationships or marriage.

I wanted to help people look at how they can make good choices about their relationships.

I also found that people, often men, express their feelings through their shame, and their need for power, and their need for control, and are violent.

We need men to be able to articulate how they feel and have the language to talk about how they feel.

They often don't. And the only way they know how to express their feeling is with violence.

I think a lot of young men now, like teenagers and men in their early 20s, they’re great because the young men and women, a lot of them are saying, “we don't want those old relationships and those old structures. We want equality. Couples want equal partnership because that is best for both of them.  So if he wants to stay home and raise children, and I want to go to work, that's what we'll do.”

Or we'll both work part-time and we'll both share parenting. Or we'll both travel. Or we might be a partnership, but we don't have to live together.

They're really looking at different models. And a lot of the young men are now able to say, call out their mates if they're being sexist, showing power and control, and tell them it's inappropriate.

And I think that's fantastic. Really great. So I see that we're making some inroads, but it's hard.

And it's hard for males because we were such a rigid society. In Australia you don't want to be a feeling male!  Australia only rewards ISTJ, ISTP, or ESTJ males.

And so it's been really exciting more recently that we've got a lot more men who are able to embrace their creativity and have a life of their heart, which was not really acceptable if you go back the last few generations.

So it's perhaps men engaging in, even if they are not like NF types or whatever, engaging in kind of creative works or to practice expressing their feelings. Those are good things that are helpful for people.

Harumi: At the AusAPT conference in Brisbane. You presented on family violence.

Meredith: Yes, I looked at three types of male violence and how different they were.

There's two types of violence most people are aware of.

The first one that we're all aware of is coercive control. And that's the typical power and control violent male who murders.

Harumi: The typical type that commits this type of violence is ESTJ, I think you said, in your presentation:

Meredith: Yes that’s right, ESTJ. And ISTJ

And then there's that drug, alcohol, substance abuse type of person. They’re out of it and they are not aware of what they are doing.

They may have an untreated mental illness or are affected by a substance and people get killed unintentionally.

Typologically, like INFP or ISFP or INTP or ISTP.

One of the things we know about addiction is that a lot of NF and SF people are more likely to be addicted more of the time.

But then there is a third type of violence.

I don't know if you find this in America and Japan, but there are men who are lacking in agency and responsibility.

They tend to be people who just want to go along with whatever's happening. They often marry or partner up with women who are high achievers and who have great jobs.

Often they'll stay at home or they might be musicians or artists who don't want to necessarily earn a lot of money, or they are always losing their jobs and then they can't be bothered.

And they go along and everything's fine because they'll just do whatever. But then something will trigger them.

And often it's when the rules change. Their partners want to have children or they don’t want to work their high-powered job anymore and want the man to work.

And then the men feel cornered and invaded. And often when they're pushed, they'll kill the woman and the children, or sometimes just the woman.

And the neighbours will say, “He was such a nice person. Where did that come from?”

It's this murderous rage because they don’t want their life of ease to change and they don't want to take any responsibility.

And they become overwhelmed and then they just kill the partner.

Harumi: Is there a type preference?

Meredith: They are often Introverts. They’re more likely to be Perceivers.

So we come back to what Elizabeth Murphy said about our babies and our children.

I think it's great now that we have a lot more men who are becoming early childhood development teachers and we've got to get more men into primary school teaching.

Harumi: Why do you think it is important for men to be involved in early childhood development areas?

Meredith: Because children need to see female and male modelling.

Women are rewarded for relationship and discussion and talking and being vulnerable. And men are rewarded for being silent and stoic and strong.

Child-rearing is not just women’s work.

Our society shouldn't be about who makes the most money.

We need to have more men involved.

We need to encourage that.

Harumi: One last question, why did you do the murder mystery parties?

Meredith: I hear a lot of people in the Type community talk about type, but they don't imbibe type. "People say and people do; observe what they do - and that's their truth."

You see a lot of people talk about type without living it and reflecting on their own behaviour, even while they are at a conference or Type function doing the opposite of what they purport to do!

And I've always thought this isn't good.

I did those activities to get them to look at their own behaviour in a safe way.  You can hold up a mirror with humour and sensitivity when debriefing.  It isn't safe or ethical for everyone to start accusing each other in a meeting of not walking their talk!

I had them engage in pairs and then reflect back on how they behaved in a team trying to solve problems. And it's a bit of a shock to them. Everyone feeding back about other people and their own behaviour led to some profound group discussions.

So when you get people to do an activity that's a real activity and it's competition and there's urgency and whatever, you start to see the behaviours and you can feed it back to them. And then they start to get it.

You don't just talk about it. You’ve got to do the work.