Well I did get it restoring by changing:
$message = new message();
to
$message = new object();
which I found in another post.
But then I had other problems.
So another clean install & all is restoring fine from 1.8 > 1.9.2
Mysterious are the ways of Moodle sometimes.
Backup and restore
Restore my sanity (course) version 1.9.1
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