The fire trail bit is no worse than the fire trail section on the Blue Tier to Swimcart descent. Yeah it's dull, but I think it feels worse because it's at the end of the ride rather than at the beginning or in the middle so it's a bit of a let down. I agree with you thought that e-bikers are gonna love it. However if you can point me in the direction of a 27km trail that's all built for the Enduro/ DH crowd I'm all ears. Even the Blue Tier/ Atlas/ Dambusters descent into Derby requires several km of road slogging if you don't shuttle the section of from the Weldborough up to the Atlas trailhead.
for me its more that the fire trail is out of character and serves no purpose (though I'm sure it actually does). Don't get me wrong it was a good and moderately easy way to cover some ground between trails but reminded me of my XC enduro days. You've got 20 kays of really well planned and built trail, then all of a sudden you just ride up a public road (albeit a fire trail). On my ride I did cross paths with a motard coming at speed the other way on a blind corner, thankfully I could hear him coming so pulled off to the side of the road before he came roaring round at speed. The entrance to the fire road climb is well chewed up by moto's so they appear to use that section extensively as well.
More to the point there was so much forest left to continue a mtb only trail on for those few kilometres so I'm still just left perplexed as to why they decided to use a fire trail to link up sections of newly built trail?
Is it a trail that people will come from all around to ride? I'd say no. The queenslanders who were on e-mtb's were saying the same thing, there's just too much climbing between fun bits, but that's always going to be the problem at St Helens/Scamander. The place is just too damn hilly to put in epic long trails, but by doing so it does provide something different and unique.
I've certainly enjoyed the 5 trips I've done so far this year and best of all after a days riding you can hit the beach for a surf, or pull our the kayak for a fish like I did for the rest of the weekend.