A new graffiti artist has Port Douglas businesses fuming after tagging several properties over the last week.

Two walls of The Pavilions Apartments in Macrossan Street were tagged with graffiti last Thursday, with On The Spot Signs in Warner Street being hit over the weekend. 

Both tags feature the words ‘Bingo’, with the Pavilion tag also prominently displaying the word “Melbourne”. 

Sergeant Damien Meadows from Port Douglas Police said that this already gave police a lead in tracking the culprit down. 

“We actually maintain a national graffiti database, so we can check this graffiti and the names associated with it against that database and see if it comes up with any hits - for the majority of graffiti artists that tag is their signature of sorts and it’s how they identify themselves,” Sergeant Meadows said. 

“Normally graffiti is very rare in Port Douglas - we usually only get one or two incidents a year - and it is a significant impost on businesses that have to pay to get it covered.

“It’s also a bit of a downgrade for the look of the town - Port Douglas is one of the most well-kept towns I’ve worked in and it’s a shame to see this happen.”

Sergeant Meadows added that there wasn’t enough call for public walls designed as an outlet for graffiti art projects. 

“In the larger cities there’s a lot of very artistic graffiti that has been put up and designed to be public art, but if it’s just inane comments or crude pictures then it’s far from art,” he said.