Thanks for the explanation scf, it's all clear now. I wanted to see the automatic bids as it is all part of the process that I was trying to understand.  The key peice of info that you provided was that "bids with the same timestamp are the single bid" - all makes perefect sence to me now.  I had mistakenly assumed that the timestamp was when the bidder placed a one off bid or the ebay server placed the automatic bid.

I had read ebays help section, but to be frank, I found it a bit lacking in depth.