  We present a deep near-infrared (NIR) photometric catalogue of sources from
the Parkes HI Zone of Avoidance (HIZOA) survey, which forms the basis for an
investigation of the matter distribution in the Zone of Avoidance. Observations
were conducted between 2006 and 2013 using the Infrared Survey Facility (IRSF),
a 1.4-m telescope situated at the South African Astronomical Observatory site
in Sutherland. The images cover all 1108 HIZOA detections and yield 915
galaxies. An additional 105 bright 2MASS galaxies in the southern ZOA were
imaged with the IRSF, resulting in 129 galaxies. The average $K_s$-band seeing
and sky background for the survey are 1.38 arcsec and 20.1 mag, respectively.
The detection rate as a function of stellar density and dust extinction is
found to depend mainly on the HI mass of the HI detected galaxies, which in
principal correlates with the NIR brightness of the spiral galaxies. The
measured isophotal magnitudes are of sufficient accuracy (errors $\sim$ 0.02
mag) to be used in a Tully-Fisher analysis. In the final NIR catalogue, 285
galaxies have both IRSF and 2MASS photometry (180 HIZOA plus 105 bright 2MASX
galaxies). The $K_s$-band isophotal magnitudes presented in this paper agree,
within the uncertainties, with those reported in the 2MASX catalogue. Another
30 galaxies, from the HIZOA northern extension, are also covered by UKIDSS
Galactic Plane Survey (GPS) images, which are one magnitude deeper than our
IRSF images. A modified version of our photometry pipeline was used to derive
the photometric parameters of these UKIDSS galaxies. Good agreement was found
between the respective $K_s$-band isophotal magnitudes. These comparisons
confirm the robustness of the isophotal parameters and demonstrate that the
IRSF images do not suffer from foreground contamination, after star removal,
nor under-estimate the isophotal fluxes of ZoA galaxies.
