We present the first paper in a series detailing the results of ^13^CO observations of a ~1{deg}^2^ region of the giant molecular cloud (GMC) complex associated with the HII region RCW 106. The ^13^CO observations are also the first stage of a multi-molecular line study of the same region. These observations were amongst the first made using the new on-the-fly mapping capability of the Australia Telescope National Facility Mopra Telescope. In the configuration used, the instrument provided a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) beam size of 33arcsec and a velocity resolution of 0.17km/s. The gas emission takes the form of a string of knots, oriented along an axis that extends from the north-west (NW) to the south-east (SE) of the field of the observations, and which is surrounded by a more extended, diffuse emission. We analyse the 2D integrated ^13^CO emission using the CLUMPFIND algorithm and identify 61 clumps. We compare the gas data in the GMC with the dust data provided by 21um Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) and 1.2mm Swedish European Southern Observatory Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) images that we both regridded to the cell spacing of the Mopra data and smoothed to the same resolution.