There's a family legend that Phillip was born at sea 181 between Liverpool and Ireland 182 However his birth certificate shows that he was born at his mother's residence at 64 Cuthberts St, Westoe in the South Shields district of Durham county, on the opposite side of England.183 184 185 His birth certificate calls him Philip Incledon and his parents as Philip INCLEDON, master mariner, and Ellen INCLEDON née HALL. 186

According to Philip's youngest daughter, Vera, the hospital was going to amputate his leg but his sister, Mary, smuggled him out of the hospital using a ladder 184 Mary took the twins, Philip and Ellen, to Australia. They sailed from Plymouth to Melbourne in the Colonial Empire, departing Plymouth 24 September 1872. The ship's passenger list shows them all as servants and gives their ages. Mary was 21; the twins were 16. 187 Their old brother William may have been in Australia already.

After some years they moved to Ballarat, then to Ararat. In Ararat Philip was the foreman of Thomas Tobin's grocery store. He was a very smart dresser and, according to family stories, happier when chatting to customers than doing hard work. He was a smart dresser. Barry McDonald has an old photo showing him in a bowler hat and waistcoat outside the grocers shop. According to Philip's grandson, Sid McNaughton, Philip used to make grocery deliveries to the Ararat Insane asylum. Once he "got a fright" when one of the inmates chased him down the hill and finally caught him, only to tag him and say “toched you last” and run off.

He moved to Willaura and was for fifteen years the licensee of the Willaura Hotel. It burnt down in the 1890's and he moved on to rent a second. He was offered the lease but didn’t take it up so, when gold was discovered at Mt William in 1902 the landlord took over and Philip had to find something else. He built a grocery store and the Coffee Palace with 29 bedrooms, a billards saloon and a wine licence. He ran this business for twenty five years. Willaura was the closest town to the Mount William goldfields. At that time, Philip's business took £200 in sixpences from the unemployed men who had been brought by train from Melbourne to work the goldfields.

Philip was criticized by other Catholics in Willaura for going on the stage at a farewell function for a Presbyterian minister and for allowing his daughter Aileen to marry a Protestant.

Philip and Mary sold the Coffee Palace in Willaura and bought a house at 24 Tennyson Ave, Caulfield about 1929. The Coffee Palace burnt down in 1948.

When ill in 1934, Philip went to stay with his daughter Doris McDonald in Willaura. He was buried in the Willaura cemetery after a large funeral. The wreaths included one from the Willaura Cricket Club. It seems that Philip had started trophy matches between the cricket clubs of Wickliffe Road (the old name for Willaura) and Ararat or else the trophies were named after him. 188