Im after the equivalent of Character map from Windows in OSX, I'm after certain characters for a project and cannot find anything in my applications folder.
yes im still new to mac after 3months of daily use...
You can do it via the Character Palette as described in this Apple help document. Although it claims to be 10.4 specific I think it holds true for 10.5 too. You may need to turn on the Input menu in System Preferences (a Google search should tell you how)...