We present the first results of a blind HI survey for galaxies in the southern Zone of Avoidance with a multibeam receiver on the Parkes telescope. This survey is eventually expected to catalog several thousand galaxies within Galactic latitude |b|<5 degrees, mostly unrecognised before due to Galactic extinction and confusion. We present here results of the first three detections to have been imaged with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). The galaxies all lie near Galactic longitude 325 degrees and were selected because of their large angular sizes, up to 1.3 degrees. Linear sizes range from 53 to 108 kpc. The first galaxy is a massive 5.7x10^11 solar mass disk galaxy with a faint optical counterpart, SGC 1511.1--5249. The second is probably an interacting group of galaxies straddling the Galactic equator. No optical identification is possible. The third object appears to be an interacting pair of low column density galaxies, possibly belonging to an extended Circinus or Centaurus A galaxy group. No optical counterpart has been seen despite the predicted extinction (A(B) = 2.7 - 4.4 mag) not being excessive. We discuss the implications of the results, in particular the low HI column densities (~10^19 atoms/sq.cm) found for two of the three galaxies.
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