Thanks for for all the information guys :)

Just wanted to say thanks for a great thread. I personally skipped the absolute paths (P) option and just navigated to the directory containing the folder I wanted to tar, e.g.

Note: This was in OSX 10.4

tar -cjf /Volumes/10.10.0.123/TestDir/TESTTHIS.tbz TESTTHIS
instead of
tar -cjf /Volumes/10.10.0.123/TestDir/TESTTHIS.tbz /foo/TESTTHIS


Wanted to post a side note for OSX users, you may want to consider running
Mac OS X v10.4 and later: How to prevent .DS_Store file creation over network connections
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
or
OS X, tar and Resource Forks
export COPY_EXTENDED_ATTRIBUTES_DISABLE=true

if you're in a multi-OS environment.