just hypothetically now, if someone had about one litre of water with a few grams of ephedrine freebase disolved in it, and then this someone evaporated the water to dryness under a condenser, collecting the water, would any of the ephedrine vaporise with the water or would it have to be steam distilled?

the ephedrine would distill over with the water - it is steam volatile!

just add HCl until the solution is slightly acidic before evaporation - Ephedrine.HCl isnt steam volatile any more!

Or Extract the water with a NP and evaporate this to get the base!