surely the libary works as otherwise others would have run into this as well???
One would think so, yes. However not too many people have obtained a GPS in the same way you did.
how is it managing to get the correct time, lat and long, ammount of sats and all the other things if its getting just garbage?
You pass each character read to the library. Perhaps it is doing some sanity checking, ignoring non-printing characters. I really don't know. That is what you are about to learn.
im going to try and have a look at the libaray, it prob wont much sesnse as trying to decipher other peoples coding is never easy
Mikal Hart's stuff is pretty easy to understand.