Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have an understanding of how the stars and constellations are connected to environmental phenomena on Earth.

They developed complex seasonal calendars that incorporate detailed knowledge of the positions of stars and constellations with corresponding terrestrial events, such as changing weather patterns, animal behaviour, and the availability of plants and medicines. This knowledge was used to sustainably alter the environment to enhance the availability of food and medicines.

For every region across Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples closely observe the life cycles of the plants, animals, and insects, how they tie with the seasons, and how these cycles repeat year after year. This knowledge has been refined over tens of thousands of years, adapting to various environmental changes that have occured over that time. They relate the flowering and fruiting times of important food and medicinal plants, the timing of animal breeding and insect life cycles, the movement of birds to inland rivers and waterways, and annual whale migrations along the coast. This information was recorded and encoded into oral history, song, dance, and ceremony, ensuring it could be accurately passed and maintained.

Indigenous Knowledge is developed in situ, meaning the body of knowledge generally relates to the environment and region in which it was developed. Today, there are increasing efforts to record and preserve Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in the form of informative regional resource calendars, each specific to its relevant region. Each chart contains and conveys several layers of interrelated information on season names and times of year, the seasonal quality (wet/dry, hot/cold, predominant wind direction, etc.) what animal, plant or insect is abundant for each season, and other relationships. These are generally marked by the appearance of important seasonal stars at dusk and/or dawn that herald these changes.

In many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditions, each season was heralded by the appearance of an important indicator star, or sometimes a group of stars (asterisms). Around the Adelaide Plains, South Australia, for example, the Kaurna people recognise four distinct seasons similar to those found in European traditions. Each of the four seasons, Kudilla (Winter), Wilto (Spring), Wolta (Summer) and Parna (Autumn) was accompanied by the appearance of one or more stars in the sky at dusk.