Lazy Lizard Motor Inn

Rooms and decor

Lazy Lizard is a classic Australian motel — a single-storey building with rooms lined up in a row around a central pool and a tropical garden. There are 22 rooms in a few layouts: solo studios, doubles, and family rooms that sleep four. Some come with a small kitchenette (fridge, microwave and coffee maker), and every room has air-con, a flat-screen TV and an ensuite bathroom. It's straightforward rather than stylish, and the door-front parking bay is the detail that wins over self-drivers.

Food and amenities

There's no restaurant here, so the kitchen is the move — book a room with a kitchenette and you can cover breakfast yourself. The shared BBQ area is the social heart of the place, the kind of evening grill that road-trippers across Australia tend to use. The oval outdoor pool sits in the tropical garden, ringed by palms and sun loungers, and there's free Wi-Fi throughout plus a coin-operated laundry that earns its keep on a longer stay. The front desk will also help you book Great Barrier Reef and Daintree tours.

Location and getting there

The motel sits on Davidson Street at the entrance to Port Douglas — driving up from Cairns on the Captain Cook Highway, it's the first place you reach as you enter town. That puts it about 1.5 km from central Macrossan Street (a 3-minute drive) and roughly 600 m from Four Mile Beach (an 8-minute walk). It's farther out than the in-town hotels, but the trade-off is the parking — and in central Port Douglas, where a space is hard to find, parking right outside your room is a real perk. Real-guest reviews on Trip.com sit at 8.4, high for a motel this size.

Things to know before booking

This is a small, simple place, so set expectations: no restaurant, no gym, no spa. You're about 1.5 km from the Macrossan Street action, which means a 15-20 minute walk or a short drive most times you head into the centre. Four Mile Beach is roughly 600 m off — walkable, but not the step-onto-the-sand setup of the beachfront options. And not every room has a kitchenette, so if cooking matters to you, ask for one when you book.

Our take

Lazy Lizard Motor Inn suits the road-tripping family driving up from Cairns who wants motel convenience, a private parking bay and a low rate — from around $96 a night, the cheapest in town. If your plan is to push on to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree after Port Douglas, this is the easiest, best-value base — and one of the few places that still keeps a bit of that outback-Australia motel character in a tourist town.