A Low Frequency Pilot Survey of Southern HII Regions in the Vela
  Constellation
  Atomic ionised regions with strong continuum emission are often associated
with regions of high-mass star formation and low-frequency (<2GHz) observations
of these regions are needed to help build star formation models. The region
toward the Vela Supernova Remnant is particularly interesting as it is a
complex structure of recent supernova explosions and molecular clouds
containing a number of HII regions that are not well characterised. We searched
publicly available catalogues for HII regions, both candidate and identified,
which also have low-frequency emission. In the area of ~400 square degrees
toward the Vela Supernova remnant, we found 10 such HII regions, some of which
have multiple components in catalogues. In this work we use data from the
Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and previously unpublished data
from the Murchison Widefield Array and the Australian Telescope Compact Array
to analyse these sources. The high-mass star forming region RCW 38, with
observations specifically targeted on the source, is used as a pilot study to
demonstrate how low-frequency, wide-field continuum observations can identify
and study HII regions in our Galaxy. For the 9 other HII regions, we discuss
their properties; including information about which clouds are interacting,
their ages, whether they are dominated by infrared or optical H$\alpha$ lines,
distances, ionising photon flux, and upper limits on the infrared luminosity.
In future work, these 9 regions will be analysed in more detail, similar to the
result for RCW 38 presented here.
