I have a column in a table where timestamps have been stored in VARCHAR format, but I need to compare these against a column of DATETIME values from another table to find time intervals, so I want to either cast or convert the VARCHAR timestamps to DATETIME. However, both casting and converting are giving me problems. 

The format of the VARCHAR timestamp looks like this: `"29/07/2012 01:53:36 +12"`. 

Using the query:

```
SELECT CAST(event_timestamp AS datetime) FROM the_table

```

produces `ERROR: date/time field value out of range: "29/07/2012 01:53:36 +12"`. 

Using the query: 

```
SELECT CONVERT(datetime, event_timestamp, 131) from the_table;

```

produces 

```
ERROR:  syntax error at or near ","
LINE 1: select CONVERT(datetime, event_timestamp, 131) from the_tab...
                               ^ (note: this is pointing at the first comma). 

```

The error with CONVERT actually happens even if you use a generic function such as `getdate()` for the data source. This db uses ANSI SQL-92 (or so I'm told). Could anyone please help me out with this?