Where are the actual files on the  Time Machine backup hard drive?

If I take my time machine back up hard drive and hook it up to another computer, I cannot find my files. For instance, the files that would be in my home folder (pictures, music and movies).
When I open the finder window and go to my user folder, all I see are the folders, but they are aliases.
I get the message that the volume "documents" cannot be found.
So where are these files?
Thanks in advance.

I am not running leopard on the other computers, and so Time Machine is not available.
On the other computers, I need to have classic support, so I haven't installed Leopard, so that is not an option.
I just don't understand why these files do not show up on other computers. At some level, if I can't access the files on other computers, it nearly defeats the purpose of Time Machine.

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