NGC 1365 is a southern, strongly barred spiral galaxy with no apparent companions. VLA HI observations by Ondrechen & van der Hulst (1989) show the overall gas extent of the galaxy. The central region contains a Seyfert nucleus as well as circum-nuclear radio continuum and H$\alpha$ emission, indicating star formation (Saikia et al. 1994; Sandqvist, Jörsäter & Lindblad 1995). Ondrechen & van der Hulst find a strong absorption feature centred at 1570 kms^-1 with a width of only 33 kms^-1. But their position-velocity diagrams indicate a much broader ( $\Delta v \ga 200$ kms^-1) feature which is confirmed by Jörsäter & van Moorsel (1995) who find a total velocity width of 313 kms^-1 for the HI absorption. Our own ATCA snap-shot observations of NGC 1365 and also NGC 1097, another strongly barred galaxy, clearly reveal HI absorption over a broad velocity range. The broad absorption features are most likely caused by a rapidly rotating ring/disk of neutral gas. For NGC 1365 a similar disk of ionized matter with a radius of 7 has already been inferred by Lindblad (1978). NGC 1097 is in many respects very similar to NGC 1365 (see Ondrechen, van der Hulst & Hummel 1989). The continuum sources of both galaxies are displayed in Fig. 4.

Figure 4: 20-cm radio continuum emission of the starburst galaxies NGC 1365 and NGC 1097. These data were taken with the largest array of the ATCA (snap-shot). The beam has been convolved to 8.