10 things you need to know this morning in Australia

1. More than 30,000 Australians have been urged to evacuate East Gippsland in Victoria's east, as bushfires threaten to shutdown the "only road out", the Princes Highway. As of 6am on Monday, an emergency warning was in place as it became too late for neighbouring residents in Furnell, Tamboon, Tamboon South and Wingan River to leave.

2. The fire risk on the other side of the state meanwhile was enough to see Falls Festival in Lorne cancelled on just the second of its four-day run. International acts including Vampire Weekend and Of Monsters and Men were set to headline, with 9,000 revellers told to leave. All tickets will be refunded in full, and some may even get to see their favourite artists with seven acts having announced impromptu last minute sideshows, with proceeds pledged to support exhausted firefighters.

https://twitter.com/_naomiavery/status/1211041300037849088

3. In what could be one of the largest rollouts of the technology for Australian business yet, some 400 TAB stores are introducing facial recognition. The betting stores will use cameras to identify and kick out underage gamblers. Shopping giant Amazon is meanwhile trying to identify shoppers by their hands in the US. Creeps.

4. Speaking of speculative gamblers, the Australian man claiming to have invented bitcoin says his crypto riches could be locked away forever. Craig Wright claims he lost the key to his purported fortune as a judge rules he owes $US3 billion to a fellow miner, now deceased.

5. By now, you've probably seen Australia's latest tourism ploy. The 'Matesong' campaign cost $15 million and features icons like Shane Warne, Kylie Minogue and Ash Barty to attract UK visitors to our shores. Here's why the government reckons it's worth every cent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMAq8F8N2Fg

6. Proving there's no safe place left, a less than welcome visitor is headed our way in the form of a giant 'blob'. A mammoth amount of warm water larger than the size of New South Wales is making its way to New Zealand, threatening to wipeout fish and coral in its path. It sounds like something out of a bad film but we've seen this one before, doing much the same to Hawaii and California in 2014.

7. Donald Trump has revealed the identity of the whistleblower at the centre of his impeachment inquiry, who raised the alarm after the President's now-infamous Ukraine phone call. While the whistleblower's identity wasn't under lock and key, it hadn't been shared publicly by media or officials until Trump retweeted it overnight. While the tweet has since disappeared, it is believed to have been pushed to Trump's more than 68 million followers and kept live for more than an hour.

8.Meanwhile, as Trump gears up in his re-election campaign, his daughter Ivanka appears unsure over whether or not she'll even have a job inside his possible 2020 administration.

9. China's space aspirations look on track after it successfully launched its biggest rocket, Long March 5, into space. While a 2017 launch failed due to a faulty gas pump, the most recent one will reinvigorate the nation's space dreams.

10. Maybe think twice before you rush to Amazon for a home security system. Its supplier Ring is being sued in the US for failing to meet its “most basic obligation by not ensuring its Wi-Fi enabled cameras were protected against cyber-attack", amid a string of reported security bugs. Amazon for its part is also being sued for not taking responsibility and blaming users instead. We'll see how that one plays out.

Bonus item

This year's bushfires have devastated so many groups, not least of which has been the humble koala. Proving Australians rise to the occasion, this koala hospital has been helping get the little marsupials back on their feet and produced the kind of adorable photos that you've been waiting for. See the whole lot here.