Ahh yes, VERY good point.
Contact your local club or astro society and attend a viewing night. Try these
http://www.seqas.org/ or
www.sas.org.au which are clubs up your way.
Speak to the members, look through the club scopes, ask lots of questions, get some invaluable advice. Sort of what we give you, but with the bonus of trying the scopes personally at the same time.
Trust me, that $290 telescope is going to annoy you very soon, the boxes show you colour pics of galaxies and planets, you wont get these. If it does anything, it will get you interested more in Astronomy and then you will HAVE to buy a better scope, and have a $290 one gathering dust or being advertised on IceTrade or Ebay before long.
Best advice I have ever heard regarding scopes came from Les Dalrymple, contributing editor to AS&T magazine: "The best telescope is the one you use most often"
Sooner or later, you are going to grow out of that scope, sorry.
Edit: By the way, I just found on the SEQAS site an EXCELLENT guide for beginners, take a look and read the order of purchases...
http://www.seqas.org/Documents/Begin.pdf
Cheers
Chris