This is the third of a series of three papers which report on maintenance behaviour of individual Shorthorn cows observed over 24-hour periods at fortnightly intervals for two years in central Australia. In this part, sequences of activities are analysed using Markov chain methods, and this is followed by an integrated discussion of the results of all three papers in the series. Temporal grazing patterns, distance travelled, elimination and watering frequencies, and distribution of the cattle in the available plant communities at daybreak were examined in Part I. The continuously-recorded data on grazing, walking, ruminating, resting, and drinking were analyzed in Part II using multivariate and univariate statistical techniques to relate duration and incidence of activities to several environmental factors. The sequences of activities of cows exhibit five basic patterns: summer day and night, autumn night, winter/spring night and autumn/winter/spring day. Kinetograms, diagrams showing activity sequences, were used to give a graphical representation of the dynamic way in which the activities are structured under each of these conditions. A major feature was that during the day, standing resting is a “pivotal” activity and many of the other activity changes pass through this; in particular an occurrence of standing resting of considerable duration tends to separate active behaviours (grazing, walking) from passive behaviours (especially those involving lying). At night, in contrast, bouts of grazing perform this pivotal role. The seasons differed largely in the way activities following grazing were performed, with cattle in summer being more likely to go directly from grazing to ruminating rather than from grazing to standing to ruminating as they do in other seasons. The overall discussion brings out the way in which the animal structures many different aspects of its behaviour in coping successfully with the periodically stressful environment of central Australia. All analyses showed that there was some adjustment of activity as seasons changed, but that no single environmental factor had a major influence. Behavioural patterns differed from day to night, but moonlight nights were not used differently from those without moonlight. Somewhat surprisingly, little influence of forage condition on behaviour was found. In particular, it appeared that, within the range of conditions observed in the study, the cows did not need to adjust the length and number of bouts of grazing to cope with varying forage quantity and quality, although they did seem to have to graze more widely as forage became scarcer. The main behavioural adjustment seemed to be an increase in frequency and length of bouts of ruminating in summer. Comparison with other studies suggests that cattle behaviour is particularly robust under a wide variety of conditions. Several management recommendations follow from the discussion; in particular the use of smaller paddocks and possibly of breeds which have less energy loss due to rumination in summer are suggested.