Record gold prices boost the new Bellevue mine in Australia, with possibility of further gains 'gravy on top'.  The gold shovels propped up next to the podium were a dead giveaway.  Never has there been a better time to be a gold miner.  Our fifth most-valuable export has been hitting new highs, surpassing $US 2,200 an ounce this month.  That's more than $3,300 in Australian currency.  When the team at Bellevue Gold gathered to officially open their new mine in Western Australia's Goldfields region, chief executive Darren Stralow was beaming as brightly as the glittering shovel he presented to the WA mines minister to commemorate the event.  "Record high gold prices, I'd like to say we planned it that way, but we'll certainly take it," he told Newsroom Panama.Bellevue poured its first gold in October, when the spot price was near its recent low of about $US 1,800 an ounce.  With the commodity now fetching about $US 400 an ounce more than that, the miner expects to generate strong numbers on the 200,000 ounces it hopes to process each year.  "We're just in the process now of opening up a few new mining areas, getting multiple production levels open, and that's really going to drive the underground productivity," said Mr Stralow.  "We think it's going to happen between now and the end of this financial year, which sets us up for a really strong fiscal year 2025."