Mike Moon: Daddy and mommy meerkat and the baby meerkats were having a lovely frolic in freshly harrowed earth. It's very lucky they noticed they were about to be flattened by a charging herd of large beasts.

As the freaked-out meerkats bounded from the Kimberley racetrack to the safety of the surrounding Northern Cape bush, punters watching the drama on TV this week chuckled and pointed out the wildlife to their mates. It was Animal Planet mixed in with Tellytrack.

With quality family time so rudely interrupted, the mob of meerkats (that's the species group description, can you believe?) would not have had time to appreciate the remarkable fact that the racehorses about to obliterate them during the seventh at Flamingo Park hailed from all the big racing centres in South Africa.

The annual Flamingo Park racing festival was bigger and better than ever this year, with a host of racing industry personalities journeying merrily to its last outpost - not to mention top trainers trekking horses there from afar.

Notables like Joburg's Charles Laird, Cape Town's Joey Ramsden and Port Elizabeth's Gavin Smith all fielded runners, though young Durban trainer Kumaran Naidoo upstaged them all by sussing out local conditions and saddling three winners on Wednesday.

The principal celebration was for the win by Water Jet, trained by Kimberley's own Peter Miller - a rare local success in the main race in recent years.

The R200000 prize in the Racing Association Mile and the R135000 in the supporting Betting World Sprint are the lures, but there are many other attractions.

The three-day festival features two race days, a golf day, an awards dinner and a general knees-up in marquees in the veld.

In a way it harks back to the origins of racing, when rural folk, townspeople and military men gathered together from all over to pit their everyday mounts against one another in races at country fairs.

Flamingo Park's weekly Monday meetings are often derided as a "last chance saloon" for struggling thoroughbreds, but each year the venue marks spring's arrival with a bash that celebrates many of the best aspects of the sport.

Someone once said to me we shouldn't transmit live television signal of Kimberley racing to overseas betting shops as the rural setting, sandy track and occasional glimpse of an antelope, goat or rusty windmill on adjoining farmland communicate an impression of South Africa as a poor, backward place.

Utter nonsense. Such images capture an element of the country's special, unique charm, differentiating it from the mono-tonous banality of bling seen at racecourses around the world.

I'm prejudiced against Kimberley as a place, due to an unhinged sojourn there - laughably termed national service at the time. But I must say its racecourse looks great on TV. I'm tempted to join the fun at next year's festival, despite warnings that it poses dangerS in the liver department.

I might be safer than a meerkat, though.

• TURFFONTEIN TOMORROW: PA - 2,3 x 3,5,12 x 4,7 x 5,7 x 7,8,9 x 2 x 5,6 (R144)