 The Geelong Cup was first held in 1872, and Victoria's first long-distance telephone call was made from Geelong to Queenscliff on 8 January 1878, only one year after the invention of the device itself.Geelong was also the home of a prosperous wine industry until the emergence of the grapevine-eating insect "Phylloxera vastatrix" in 1885, which killed the industry until the 1960s.Between 1886 and 1889, the central business district's major banks and insurance companies erected new premises in a solid and ornate character.