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ABSTRACT We apply theztracealgorithm to the optical NOG and infrared PSCz galaxy catalogues to reconstruct the pattern of primordial fluctuations that have generated our local Universe. We check that the density fields traced by the two catalogues are well correlated, and consistent with a linear relation [either in δ or in log (1 +δ) ] with relative bias (of NOG with respect to PSCz) b[sub rel]= 1.1 ± 0.1 . The relative bias relation is used to fill the optical zone of avoidance at |b| < 20° using the PSCz galaxy density field. We perform extensive testing on simulated galaxy catalogues to optimize the reconstruction. The quality of the reconstruction is predicted to be good at large scales, up to a limiting wavenumber k[sub lim]≃ 0.4 h Mpc[sup -1] beyond which all information is lost. We find that the improvement arising from the denser sampling of the optical catalogue is compensated by the uncertainties connected to the larger zone of avoidance. The initial conditions reconstructed from the NOG catalogue are found (analogously to those from the PSCz) to be consistent with a Gaussian paradigm. We use the reconstructions to produce sets of initial conditions ready to be used for constrained simulations of our local Universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]