The 27-year-old from Tauranga simply blasted away the 200m butterfly field with a performance beyond his and team coach Jan Cameron's expectations to become New Zealand's first individual world short-course champion.
Burmester also went within a whisker of joining the flood of world record-holders at the fiveday meeting but that mattered little as he stood atop the dais, sporting a gold to match the colour won in the same event at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
To complete the set is the hardest task of all, winning at the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
‘‘It's a fantastic confidence boost for me and a nice title to have,'' he said.
‘‘The world record would have been nice to get but I got a big PB [personal best], a Commonwealth record, so I was very happy with that.
‘‘But the real focus is on the Olympics. This has given me a real lift to work even harder now through to Beijing.''
He powered away from the field to win in 1min 51.05sec, 0.32sec outside the world record of Frenchman Franck Esposito, who set his mark six years ago.
The only realistic challenge came from highlyrated Russian Nikolay Skvortsov, who finished strongly, but even he was 0.78sec behind Burmester, who only faded slightly over the final 50m.
Cameron said Burmester's performance was the crowning swim of an excellent week for New Zealand and launched him into a new category.
‘‘He's now a world champion. He's got style and substance. He's shown what a true champion he is,'' she said.
‘‘If you're making the finals here, you're in the world-class bracket. If you're winning them then it's another story all together.''
New Zealand also picked up a second medal yesterday, bronze to the men's 100m medley relay team of Daniel Bell (backstroke), Glenn Snyders (breaststroke), Corney Swanepoel (butterfly) and Cameron Gibson (freestyle).
Their time of 3min 27.15sec was 8sec faster than any New Zealand combination had ever swum and was enough to head off Australia by 0.36sec, although they were well behind winner Russia and the United States.
New Zealanders qualified for 11 finals at the championships and 21 national records were lowered.
‘‘It's the first step in our progress towards Beijing. We're on track, but we've got lots of work to do,'' Cameron said.
‘‘This is a short-course competition and it was really for racing purposes.
‘‘I thought we could learn about how to get up and how to win, and they've done that. ‘‘We're better off coming out than we were going in, so it's a big success.''
Cameron's comments were made to a backdrop of raucous team swimming as Burmester was acknowledged by his teammates.
‘‘It's a really happy team, a cohesive team,'' Cameron said. ‘‘All these swimmers went quicker in the relays than they did in the individual events.''
Burmester cast his mind to the next four months and what would be required to overcome an Olympic field likely to include American sensation Michael Phelps and Wu Peng, of China, who were both missing from Manchester.
‘‘It's going to be a tough battle, a close battle for the medals at Beijing,'' he said.
‘‘It's the pinnacle event so everyone's going to train hard for it and I'll be the same.''
As he did in Melbourne, Burmester was significantly faster in the final than the heats. He was the sixth-fastest qualifier in 1min 54.46sec and only scraped into the final by 0.47sec.
New Zealand's only previous short-course medal went to a men's relay team in 1995. No other New Zealanders were involved in finals yesterday morning.
Melissa Ingram was 10th and Helen Norfolk 11th in the women's 200m freestyle heats while Bell was 15th in the men's 200m backstroke.
