We describe an ultra-wide-bandwidth, low-frequency receiver recently installed on the Parkes radio telescope. The receiver system provides continuous frequency coverage from 704 to 4032 MHz. For much of the band ( ${\sim}60\%$ ), the system temperature is approximately 22 K and the receiver system remains in a linear regime even in the presence of strong mobile phone transmissions. We discuss the scientific and technical aspects of the new receiver, including its astronomical objectives, as well as the feed, receiver, digitiser, and signal processor design. We describe the pipeline routines that form the archive-ready data products and how those data files can be accessed from the archives. The system performance is quantified, including the system noise and linearity, beam shape, antenna efficiency, polarisation calibration, and timing stability.

Ground-state OH masers identified in the Southern Parkes Large-Area Survey in Hydroxyl were observed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array to obtain positions with high accuracy (~1 arcsec). We classified these OH masers into evolved star OH maser sites, star formation OH maser sites, supernova remnant OH maser sites, planetary nebula OH maser sites and unknown maser sites using their accurate positions. Evolved star and star formation OH maser sites in the Galactic Centre region (between Galactic longitudes of −5° to +5° and Galactic latitudes of −2° and +2°) were studied in detail to understand their distributions.

Theory predicts the triggered formation of molecular clouds stars through the fragmentation and collapse of swept-up ambient gas. Yet the majority of Galactic HI shells show no more than a scattering of small molecular clouds. The Carina Flare supershell (Fukui et al. 1999) is a rare example of an HI shell with a striking molecular component. Here we present the large-scale morphology of the molecular and atomic gas and the location of YSO candidates. A detailed look at two molecular clumps in the shell walls reveals active, intermediate mass star forming regions at various stages of early evolution.