Burnett Leslie Woodburn Clarke was born on 17 January 1897, the eldest of three sons of Leslie and Emma Clarke of 29 Wattle Road, Hawthorn, and Linton Grange, Hazelglen Victoria. He always wanted to do medicine, while his two brothers went on the land.

After being educated at Trinity Grammar School, he went to the University of Melbourne, graduating MB BS. He was resident at Melbourne Hospital and also at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane. He had a strong love for Queensland. His mother came from a pastoral family in southern Queensland, and on their holding `Kenilworth' were the head-waters of two rivers - the Mary and the Burnett. It was from this latter that he received his name. While at the Mater, the late Dr AT Nisbet interested BLW in the relatively new specialty of radiology. After his marriage on 28 June 1922 to Esme Lucy Macfarlane, whose family lived not far from Linton Grange, he and his wife went to England so he could study radiology.

He worked at University College Hospital and later at Cambridge where he studied under Ernest Rutherford (later Lord Rutherford) gaining the diploma in medical radiology and electrology on 3 May 1923. After further study at the Mayo Clinic with Russell Carmen he returned to Brisbane where he worked with Dr AT Nisbet, before going into partnership with him. He was one of the first from Australasia to gain a higher degree in radiology. In those days a radiologist performed both diagnostic and therapeutic radiology. He was very interested in the therapeutic side of the specialty and this was the ultimate cause of his death. Protection against radiation was insufficient in those early days; constant use of radium, radon needles, and moulds left their legacy with the development many years later of neoplasms of his fingers and hands. In his later life several fingers required amputation. Once he found epitrochlear and axillary glands enlarged he formed his own prognosis. He was not allowed to join the 1st AIF as he was a medical student but he wasted no time in joining up when World War II commenced. Before being sent overseas he was in charge of a special army train equipped with an x-ray machine that toured the State, carrying out chest x-rays on recruits in country centres.

In 1941 he was posted to the newly formed 2/13 AGH and then it was off to Malaya and subsequent incarceration in Changi prison camp. Repatriated in 1945 he resumed his solo radiology practice, the original partnership with AT Nisbet having dissolved about 1930 when Dr Nisbet went to Sydney. He was subsequently joined in the practice by Bill Saxton, and for some years his son Alex was also in partnership with him. He was visiting radiologist to Ipswich Hospital from 1924 to 1957 (when he was succeeded by his son) and also to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane and to Repatriation General Hospital at Greenslopes.

In the 1930s he devoted time and energy to the formation of the Queensland Cancer Trust, which later became the Queensland Radium Institute, where for many years he was a visiting radiologist. He was a foundation Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and a member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Radiology which eventually became the Royal Australasian College of Radiologists. Subsequently he became president of the College. Always a keen BMA member he became president of the state branch, at a rather difficult time when a Labor Government was trying to nationalise medicine. He held numerous other appointments with the state government and the Australian Red Cross.

His eldest son Alex entered radiology, his other son Barton became an obstetrician, and his daughter Meredith married HE Peterson, a Brisbane solicitor. He died on 9 March 1974, predeceasing his wife Esme by some eight years. He had still been active in medical practice some two weeks before his final admission to hospital.