You'll find this happening when you first hit Outland, and when you first hit Northrend. The gear is just set up to please ret pallies and enhancement shamans (not that you have any shamans, but just as an example) so it's all this goofy stuff like ATTACK POWER and STRENGTH.
Strength has become immensely useful for paladins since 3.0 . They've made it something that even those 34k HP tanks need to help with threat and mitigation. So don't worry about that; it sucks that you can't find defense gear right at 60, but the idea is you don't need it until you're closer to 70.
I gift levelled my paladin to 60 also (I was a 5-shaman team before but got frustrated without a tank) so I know exactly what you mean about scary gear! Luckily, THRALLMAR TO THE RESCUUUUUUE
It'll take you less than a few hours to go from wearing your grey starter gear to being equipped in the ugliest purple-and-lime-green shockadin gear ever.
This link has a good itemization guide at the bottom of the page: http://www.gotwarcraft.com/guides/cl...es/paladin.php . I like Maintankadin too, but I don't know if they kept their outlands guides up.
As for the macros(not that you asked) I've got three buttons I hit. One is my Seal button (Seal of Corruption, but you don't get that till 66. I forget what the good one was from 60-70 though). Hit that between fights, and probably put your mixed team's Self-Buffs on that button (Like a mage would cast frost shield, a shaman would cast water shield, a warlock would cast demon skin, etc)
The second button is consecration. I have this linked to the shaman Chain Lightning button, but your results may vary.
The third button is my "OTT" or One-Touch Tanking button. That's something like /castsequence reset=9 judgement of wisdom, holy shield, Hammer of Wrath (again I forget what else, but whatever threat abilities you have at that level)

This next link may be a lot to take in, but Manylines has boldly gone where we are trying to go now: Manylines
s/he doesn't seem to be playing anymore but the knowledge they left behind is priceless.
Have fun!