Took some mucking about, but I got it working I downloaded the 2.49a (Ubuntu deb) version of blender and it was insistent on having python 2.5, I gave in, installed 2.5 and voila, working import! Now to see if I can do anything with this ---- edit: It's not as sunny as I hoped it was celt_char_a.dae works, but so far the bigger files give the same errors as before