> Is there a way to do it short of reading the aliases.conf file, extracting the path and
> creating a CREATE DATABASE statement with it?

There is no need to do so, CREATE DATABASE should work with aliases.

You should describe in detail what you are doing on creating the
database.

Does this work if you specify the path instead of the alias?

Does the alias work after creating Database that way (perhaps you have
a typo in aliases.conf)?

Elmar