Introduction

Three compact powerful radio galaxies (P > 10²⁶ W Hz^-1 at 1.4GHz) are known south of declination -30$^{\circ}$ with z < 0.25, sufficiently near for rather detailed studies.

PKS 1353-341 is a flat spectrum source at z = 0.223, PKS 1814-637 a compact steep spectrum source at z = 0.064 and PKS 1934-638 a well known compact double GHz-peaked source at z = 0.182. Some optical and radio data on these sources are given in table . Here we present some new optical data obtained at ESO and new H I absorption measurements taken with the Australia Telescope.