I thought that I should provide a full introduction.

>From my email address, you can see my name is Greg Christie and
I live in Sydney, Australia (hence the .au)

It was in the late 60's that my father expressed the desire to purchase a bus.
I'm the eldest of 8 children (and yes we are Catholic), and the usual station
wagon was a bit small. Alas, due to cost it wasn't until 1975 that my father
bought a then 9 month old 1975 Microbus, locally assembled in Australia - and
I had a driver's license by then as well.

Well time passed, and I finally entered the work force and saved sufficient
money to purchase a 1972 microbus. I kept that for a year and it was traded
in on a new Mitsubishi Sigma (aka Galant). Sorry my father traded it in. I
bought his '75 bus.

One year later and dad was fed up with the rice burner and bought his 75 back
off me. I bought a low mileage '78 local camper conversion based on a
fully imported van. It was now 1982.

In August 1984 that camper was sold to (you guessed it) my father, who sold
the '75 to my younger brother. I got my first new vehicle - a 1984 Caravelle
CL.
I then spent the next 12 months in the United States so I didn't get to drive
this bus much. Finally in December 1987 it was traded for an new Caravelle GL,
which was a nice step up (power steering, carpet etc. etc).

Well this one was with me for just on 7 years, and even then I did not want
to get rid of it. At 185000 kilometres, a slighltly leaking head gasket
forboded some repair work - this did not worry me, but my employer, who
acutally owned the vehicle, said I had to dispose of it. So my sights were
set on a new fourth generation (EuroVan) Caravelle. The price was too much
and I am now driving an 1994 Audi 80 2.0E. Well at least it's still a VW 8-).

So in summary I have owned

 1972 Microbus 			(Australian assembled) (1979 - 1980)
 1975 Microbus       			ditto          (1980 - 1982)
 1978 Sopru Camper (Aus conversion, German van)        (1982 - 1984)
 1984 Caravelle CL        (German)		       (1984 - 1987)
 1987 Caravelle GL        (German)                     (1987 - 1994)
 1994 Audi 2.0E           (German)                     (1994 - ????)

I'm still aiming towards a new van, one day.

BTW, I am getting multiple copies of the same post (but not every post).

Also your insurance discussion is interesting. I remember when I had an '82
(I think) Rabbit insured in San Francisco there was only limited cover for
third party (like $50,000). Here in Australia, third party insurance for
property is normally fixed at several million dollars. Similiarly, third
party personal (in my state NSW) is effectively limitless for the policy
holder. The biggest hit is the compulsory third party personal insurance,
which is approx $Aus300 per year (about $US225).

-- 
+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
|Greg Christie                      | Latitude   34.06.00 South |
|                                   | Longitude 151.05.00 East  |
|greg.christie@sydney.maptek.com.au | Elevation 220 Metres      |
+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+