Have you looked at The New Daily yet? This is Australia's latest newspaper, just on line. It's mainly an aggregator, but its another source of information.
I see from The New Daily that the word selfie appears to be of Australian origin. I quote: 
Oxford Dictionaries says in mid-September 2002, an Australian wrote on ABC online: “Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”
Although “selfie” can be traced back more than 10 years, it only gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world in 2013.
Research suggests its frequency of use has increased 17,000 per cent over the past 12 months.
Thank you, Kevin!
Digging further, this ABC story suggests a strong linkage to New England. Again I quote:
Hopey had started the forum thread seeking advice about whether licking his lips would make his stitches dissolve too soon. He went on to offer:
"Anyone wanna see a picture of it? It's pretty cool."
Hopey then posted a link to an image that was uploaded on the servers of the University of New England in Armidale.
The link is now dead - but the ABC was able to recover the photo via the wonders of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
One thing is for sure: if this is the first selfie, it was not posted with the goal of garnering 'likes'.
Now the search is on to find Hopey!
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