Where was the centre of Shady Creek

There are Shady Creeks all over the English-speaking world, naturally enough. That made research on the web quite interesting but also rather fruitless. There are at least three Shady Creeks in Victoria alone, and the USA has dozens.
Yet Shady Creek, our Shady Creek, has an interesting past, though I did have to look for the exact location.
The Shady Creek Hall is at the junction of the Yarragon-Shady Creek Rd and the Darnum-Shady Creek Rd, and the former goes on northward to meet the Old Sale Rd. There is also a Nilma-Shady Creek Rd, in the tradition of naming roads for where they went. Shady Creek is a district rather than a township and I'll use the hall as the correct location today.
Years ago, many years, the location was centred further north, on the Gippsland Track, to become the Old Sale Rd, at the current junction with the Yarragon Rd.
However, I cannot find a map that will tell me exactly where the creek runs. Even Dr Google's satellite images did not help.
In 1851 there was an unconfirmed report of gold being found at Shady Creek. In 1860 McRae's party let it be known that they had found gold at Shady Creek. The "track between Buneep (Bunyip) and Shady Creek (was) hazardous even for pack horses". In 1861, though, the report says that Shady Creek, on what it calls the Melbourne Road was almost deserted. Where there had been two hundred diggers there were now thirty, "mostly Melbourne prowling and loafing class."
In 1864 there was a minor rush to the Tarago and there were six or seven particular spots that yielded promising gold. At this time upper Shady Creek was also being worked, but with poor results.
State School 3458, Shady Creek, opened as Moe Swamp West, not the most attractive of names. It opened in the local hall in 1901 and stayed there until a school building was put up but that one was destroyed by a bushfire in 1914. The school was eight miles north of Yarragon. "Vision and Realisation", the 1972 Centenary of State Education publication also tell us that in 1906 Elizabeth Edwards planted a pine tree near the hall, and that tree was still strong in 1972.
I'll have to see if it is still there.
Just to complicate matters, there was another Shady Creek school, too. SS 2772 Shady Creek, near Welshpool, opened in 1886, closed in 1893, opened again in 1895 and closed in 1899.
The Drovers' Rest hotel was there by 1865. It was owned by Nicol Brown and was a coaching team stop, but in 1868 Brown was found guilty of murder and went to gaol for eighteen years, but that is another story, perhaps for next week.
The Drovers' Rest was not an elegant building, just a shanty (though it did have a cellar, of which some trace remained until roadworks buried it. It was a 'refuelling' stop for coach horses and the people they hauled into and out of Gippsland. It was also used by prospectors and cattle drovers, though the building of a toll gate at Brandy Creek meant many herds were driven further north to avoid the tolls.
It had rough cattle yards and equally rough stabling for horses.
Brown had a half share in the Scrubby Forest run, in the Yinnar area. He did not live on the run for long, if at all, as he ran the Drover's Rest and coach stables at Shady Creek. He had a partner, William Hillier, who lived on Scrubby Forest. He would grow horse feed at Scrubby Forest and cart it to Shady Creek to supply Cobb & Co's horses.
The Drovers' Rest was the only place in the area licensed to sell alcohol so it had a certain attraction. It gained a little more business when Nicol Brown had a track cut through to Walhalla via Tanjil and Cooper's Creek in 1865. Nicol Brown must have been a man of means, because he even built three bridges along the new track, doubtless very simple bridges but costly, even so.
The Walhalla gold was brought down by coach, escorted by a bank manager and two or more mounted troopers. They stayed overnight at Brown's hotel, and the government provided a safe in which the gold could be stored overnight.
There was a police station and a post office at Shady Creek in the late 1860s and early 1870s but little else. It was well into the 1870s that the first selectors came to the district, and the coming of the Gippsland railway in 1877-1878 made it easier for more to come in from the line at Yarragon.
Therein lies the old story that the coming of the railway, and of the better road that followed it, changed, and in some cases killed, many of the earlier settlements along the original coach road.
In about 1888, a railway could have saved the 'old' Shady Creek. There was great agitation for a railway to Walhalla, and great agitation over where it should connect with the Gippsland line. Committees from Toongabbie and Traralgon wanted the line to come through their towns. It seems that Moe was always the most sensible terminus.
The argument from Yarragon was that the line would serve more people if it went through Shady Creek to the Tanjil goldfields and Moondarra to Walhalla.
In 1907 Joseph Keeble opened a sawmill of some importance near the 'old' Shady Creek, sending sawn timber out through the Yarragon station. By then, though, Shady Creek was relocating itself further south.
Settlers a little south had campaigned for a school and in 1901 State School 3458, Shady Creek, was opened, only to close in 1915 for lack of a sufficient number of pupils. It was reopened in the early 1920s, closed for while in 1949, and replaced by a brand-new school in 1956.
It had been operating in the hall for a long time and the combination made it a new centre for the life of Shady Creek. Tennis courts were built there, too.
Shady Creek will probably never move again, because transport and the needs of the community for access to services have changed dramatically, and places that were once a day's ride away are now only an hour distant.